Course Details

This Honors Interdisciplinary Study discussion course explores knowledges, philosophies and histories as told by indigenous people, including S’Klallam, Lakota, Puyallup, Snohomish, Mohawk, Pueblo, Athabascan, Blood, Navajo, Iroquois, Blackfoot, Sto:lo, Anishinaabe, Potawatomi, Seminole, Cherokee, Tlingit, Choctaw, Makah, Suquamish, Cree, Salish, Maori, and others.

“Story” and “Knowledge” are the central concepts of this course with stories and storytelling used as both pedagogy and source information. Story is understood to be any narration on any topic about any event with any amount of veracity and/or claim to exclusiveness of accuracy – from storytellers in a bighouse to LAN video game parties to LARP events. Politics, philosophies and performances will be large components of our time together.

We will be conversing with these ideas:
* performances of living
* methodologies for scholarship
* knowledge systems and their genealogies including creation stories
* negotiating and negotiated histories
* identity – including gender, phenotype, ability, history

Objectives:
In the next ten weeks I would like to see us spend time with these tasks:
* develop and revise a syllabus for our next ten weeks learning together
* learn within Anishinaabe pedagogical concepts
* undertake cognitive and experiential explorations of knowledges and philosophies within stories told by indigenous [and other] peoples
* share our insights and knowledges with other learners in the class as we encounter new knowledges and come to more developed understandings
* learn as a group with an implied responsibility for each of us to optimize the learning of everyone
* explore Anishinaabe, Snohomish and S’Klallam concepts of storytelling as pedagogy and source material
* hone our critical thinking skill, by which we mean:
-know our knowledges and their frames / systems
-question our knowledges, then ponder our questions
-learn knowledges that are discordant with our own
* improve our ability to develop and ask good questions
* write and perform a story similar to those within Anishinaabe, Snohomish or S’Klallam practices

Assignments:
PARTICIPATE- 60% OF GRADE: CR/NC. Conversations, Questions, Words, Sharings – something spoken and something written due each week.
WRITE- 10% OF GRADE: GRADED. Write an essay about stories that are associated with your major field of study here at UW. DRAW- 5% OF GRADE: GRADED. Make one or more frames that tell part of a story heard in class.
PERFORM- 25% OF GRADE: GRADED. Final Work – Perform two stories with descriptive/analytical paper and drawing.