Course Information
Description
This course takes sound as a site to explore the history of Native American encounters with Christianity, the legacies of those encounters, and the lived practices of Native communities, past and present. Sound was one arena in which Native communities actively negotiated Christianity - composing and adapting hymns in Native languages, reworking inherited musical forms to new settler and Christian contexts, and creating distinctive new musical traditions. This course asks about the affordances of these musical forms: what they made possible for the communities that developed and practiced them, and what they left behind. Course materials will be multimedia, encompassing readings, films, and recordings representing a wide range of Native Nations and Christian traditions from the eighteenth century to the present. The course also attends directly to method, drawing on approaches from Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) to ask how scholars — Native and non-Native alike — have listened to, recorded, and interpreted Native sound and song, and the ethical and interpretive stakes of that work.
Class Notes
Class to be taught by Professor Rachel M. Wheeler, Visiting Professor for Native American Religious Studies.
Not Available for BTI Cross Registration
Available for Harvard Cross Registration
Religions of the Americas
Indigenous Religions
