ENG 305U-001/41119 Native American Cinema
Dr. Grace L. Dillon. 725-8144/dillong@pdx.edu CH 117Q.
Office Hours: Wednesday, 12:30-1:30 p.m., Thursday 2:30-3:30 p.m. and by appointment.
Class meets MW 4:40-6:30 p.m./Location: NASCC 170

Requirements: Dialogue journal responses (30 %) and a final exam (40 %) are part of the course load but, in addition, you will have the opportunity in your panel presentations (30 %) to contemplate creating your own cinematography as an engaged interactive postmodern “trickster” responding to the “self-representations” within Native American cinema.

 Dialogue Journal Responses: You will hand in one journal a week which can be written for either your Monday or Wednesday session selections. In these two-three page typewritten journals, you will respond to assigned writing prompts relating to the readings and generally the topics noted in class: Specific (and possible) directions will be provided for you from time to time.  These responses will aid you in reflecting on the partnered discussions or quick workshops at the beginning of sessions and in synthesizing the material.  In sorting out the meaning of each article or assigned reading provide your own concrete film and/or cultural examples that are relevant to the areas noted for that particular session. Using the Internet Movie Data Base at http://www.imdb.com  is a handy tool to recall or check out the names of characters in your films selected.

Panel Presentations: You will join a generally three-four member group and collaborate on a 25-30 minute presentation applying film theory, postcolonial theory, or any other pertinent theory to samples of films you have in mind.  Of course, here, you may also choose to join in the activism of creating your own video.  I would recommend here a very short-short cinema piece of three to four minutes or so for the actual video with ample time to discuss your project experience. You will start forming your group and choosing your topic by the end of the second week.  Be sure to use mainly library-documented sources or scholarly venues online for these presentations. 

Final Exam:  Your final exam will consist of three parts: a section requiring you to define key terms with stipulative examples provided for each and two sections requiring you to write two well-documented essays.

 Attendance:   Because this class emphasizes group workshops and interactive discussions, absences are discouraged.  Each absence after the first three lowers your grade one level.  If you miss more than two weeks’ worth of classes, you should consider dropping this course and retaking it when your schedule permits.  

Required Texts:  1) Singer, Beverly R. Wiping the War Paint Off the Lens: Native American Film and Video. Minneapolis:  University of Minnesota Press, 2001. [Wiping the War Paint]
                       2)  Reading Packet : Available at Clean Copy. (Broadway ) [Pck.] 

Course Schedule:  The day-to-day schedule follows.  Note that you should complete the reading assignments by the day on which they are listed. 

WEEK ONE:
M 1/9  Introduction. Sherman Alexie’s Business of Fancy Dancing (2002) clip. 

W 1/11 Chris Eyre’s Smoke Signals(1998) and Michael J. F. Scott’s Spirit Rider(1993).  Reading: Wiping the War Paint  1-13 and chapter 5, “On the way to smoke Signals.” Transrealism/slipstream and Indigenous aesthetics.  

 WEEK TWO:
M 1/16  Martin Luther King Holiday.  Campus closed. 

W 1/18 Jonathan Wacks’s  Powwow Highway (1989) and Michael Apted’s Incident at Oglala: The Leonard Peltier Story(1992) and Rage Against the Machine: Live in Concert documentary (1997).  Reading: Ward Churchill’s “Fantasies of the Master Race: Categories of Stereotyping of American Indians in Film.” (Pck.) Rest of Wiping the War Paint.  Buddy movies, sleep B-films, and cult films.

WEEK THREE:
M 1/23  Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995).  Reading:  Jacquelyn Kilpatrick’s “The Sympathetic 1980s and 1990s.” Celluloid Indians. (Pck.)  cf. Johnny Depp’s The Brave (1997) and Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai(1999)   American Indian ethnic renewal. 

W 1/25 John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves(1990), Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans and Ron Howard’s The Missing (2004). Reading: JoEllen Shively’s “Cowboys and Indians: Perceptions of Western Films Among American Indians and Anglos.” (Pck.)

 Retrospectives on revisionism, captivity narratives, “going Indian.” and western traditions. 

WEEK FOUR:
M 1/30  Antonia Bird’s Ravenous (2000), Christopher Gans’ Brotherhood of the Wolf (2002), Grant Harvey’s Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning(2004),Andrew Raj Berzins and Norma Bailey’s Cowboys and Indians: The J. J. Harper Story (2003).  Reading: Robert Stam’s “The Poetics and Politics of the Postmodern.” (Pck.) Postmodernism, anti-western traditions, and the windigo spirit. Intimate intersections and forbidden frontiers.

W 2/1  Bruce Bereford’s Black Robe ( 1991), Xavier Kaller’s Squanto: A Warrior’s Tale (1994) and John Fusco and Steven Barron’s Dreamkeeper (2004). cf. Wisdom of the Mohawk Keepers (1999). Readings: Jace Weaver’s “From I-Hermeneutics to We-Hermeneutics: Native Americans and the Post-Colonial” and Robert Stam’s “Film and the Postcolonial.” (both Pck.) Modern re-shapings of  early encounters between Americans and English missionaries. Postcolonial theory.

WEEK FIVE:
M 2/6 Chris Eyre’s Skins (2002), Randy Redwood’s Doeboy (2001).  Faye Ginsburg’s “Shooting Back: From Ethnographic Film to Indigenous production/ Ethnography of Media.” (Pck.) The native indie production chain of sharing and collaboration.

 W 2/8  Chris Eyre’s Skinwalkers  Cf. Coyote Waits.  Readings: Vivian Sobchak’s ‘The Scene of the Screen: Envisioning Cinematic and Electronic Presence” and Robert Eberwein’s “The IFC and Sundance:  Channeling Independence.”  (Pck.) Cinematic techniques and production methods.

WEEK SIX:
M 2/13  Sherman Alexie’s Business of Fancy Dancing  revisited along with Bruce McDonald’s Dance Me Outside(1994). cf. Stephan Elliott’s Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert (1994) and Shelley Niro’s Honey Moccasin (1998). Two-Spirit nature, images of masculinity, and the contemporary urban American Indian.  Indigenous queer theory and masculinity studies including Terry Tafoya’s “M. Dragonfly: Two-Spirit and the Tafoya Principle of Uncertainty”  and Peter van Lent’s  “Her Beautiful Savage: The Current Sexual Image of the Native American Male” referenced in class.

 W 2/15  Valerie Red Horse’s Naturally Native (1998), Shelley Niro’s Honey  Moccasin (1998), and Chris Eyre’s Edge of America(2005).  Reading: Leonie Pihama’s “Mana Wahine Theory: Creating Space for Maori Women’s Theories.” (Pck.) Devon Abbott Mihesuah’s Indigenous American Women: Decolonization, Empowerment, and Activism referenced in class. Female friendship.

FILM FESTIVAL on Saturday, February 18, NASCC co-sponsored by AISES focusing on native and indigenous cinema.  Come join this community and bring friends.

 WEEK SEVEN:
M 2/20   Joe Johnston’s Hildago(2004), Spike Jonze’s Adaptation(2003), Lasse Hallstrom’s Chocolat(2000), and Edward Zwick’s The Last Samurai

Reading: James Clifford’s “Diasporas.” (Pck.) Mixed bloods,cross-bloods, the debate of diasporic communities in tension/conflict with indigenous locals, and the exchanges, negotiations of minor to minor transnational imaginaries

W 2/22    Zacharias Kunuk’s Fast Runner (Atanarjuat)(2002)  Reading: Faye Ginsburg’s “Embedded Aesthetics.” (Pck.) Northern exposure. Narratives of revenge, self-reliant hero as anti-social response, and re-connecting communities.

 WEEK EIGHT:
 M 2/27  Panel presentations.

W 3/1   Niki Caro’s Whale Rider(2002), Lee Tamahori’s Once Were Warriors (1995), and Phillip Noyce’s Rabbit Proof Fence (2002).  cf. Stephen Lawrence, Nick Torrens, and Phil Lucas’s Vis-à-vis Native Tongues(2003) and Simon Wincer’s  Quigley Down Under (1990).  Southern exposure. Female warriors, boarding school education, overgoing internal colonization, and aboriginal counter-resistances.

WEEK NINE:
 M  3/6  Panel presentations. 

W 3/8  Gerald Vizenor’s Harold and Orange(1984), Stuart Margolin’s Medicine River (1993) and Charlie Hill’s On and Off the Rez (2000).  Reading: Jacquelyn Kilpatrick’s “The American Indian Aesthetic.” (Pck.)  The art of miindiwag, Gerald Vizenor’s double-coded humour, the postindian, and  survivance meets Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogical intertextuality and the carnivalesque.

AISES Conference on March 10 and 11, NASCC.

WEEK TEN:
M 3/13  Panel presentations. 

W 3/15  TBA

 Final Exam Schedule: Take-home final exam due by 5:20 p.m. on Monday, March 20.