GENDERED PERSPECTIVES: INDIGENOUS CHALLENGES

HIF 3630   

GENDERED PERSPECTIVES: INDIGENOUS CHALLENGES

Faculty of Humanities and KVINNFORSK (Centre for Women- and Gender Studies) offer a 10 ECTS credit course for Master students; Gendered perspectives: Indigenous challenges. The course commences in January 2008 and consists of multiple seminars on subjects pertaining to gender and indigenous peoples’ issues.

Through eight lecturers we seek a more thorough understanding of current problems at hand as related to central challenges in today’s indigenous societies.

The course aims to give a state of the art of gender and indigenous peoples as a research field and contribute to competence building.  Internal gendered relations in indigenous societies as well as gendered relations between indigenous peoples and the majority society will be highlighted. Focus will be on language, literature, everyday life, cultural expressions and representations. A central theme will be to explore how power and influence establish possibilities, but also limitations, for participation in both minority and majority societies. The course is based on Sámi and international knowledge on indigenous conditions.

Readinglist

700 pages

General introduction:

Joyce Green (ed) 2007 Making Space For Indigenous Feminism. 224 pp.

Every lecturer: About 70 pp.

Exam
Oral presentation (15 min) of one of the course’s subjects at one of the seminars.

Home written essay of approximately 10 pages (3500 words) in an assigned topic to be written in 14 days.

Schedule spring 2008

Thursdays 0915 – 1200. Weekly from January 24th to March 13^th

January 24       Professor Tone Bleie, UiT

Introductory Lecture: Intersections between gender and indigenousness: proto-history, history and the future in contemporary political struggles and research frontiers

In this introductory lecture I will discuss how recent research on human evolution, proto-history, history and contemporary indigenous societies and their struggle for recognition pose academic and political challenges in how we can understand the intersections of gender and indigenousness.

January 31       Associate professor Laura Castor, UiT

Gendered perspectives on American Indian women through narrative:  a case study of the ethics of museum representation

Description: In this lecture we will examine the broad question: From the perspectives of American Indian women, what elements of indigenous memory, collective and personal, should be preserved?  What elements should be transformed?   To help answer these questions, we will focus on recent museum representations of American Indians, using two examples of women writing about visiting museums where objects owned by their relatives are on display.

The first hour of the lecture will provide historical context on changing relationships between American Indians and museums since the 1990s.  In the second hour, we will develop an analytical perspective for using personal narrative to make sense of collective memory. The third hour will be a seminar discussion of the readings by Hale and Power.

February 7        Professor  Laura Janda, UiT

Gender, indigenous peoples and language

February 14      Professor Erica Engelstad, UiT

New gender perspectives on the rock art of indigenous peoples.

The lecture includes rock art from Africa, Scandinavia, Australia and North America. I will also show a film about rock art.

February 21      Professor Vuokko Hirvonen, Sámi University College, Kautokeino

Máttaráhkká’s  Granddaughters: The History of Sámi Woman Writers

February 28      Senior researcher Britt Kramvig, Northern Research Institute, Tromsø

Indigenous gender and gifts in everyday life

In this paper I will explore reciprocal relation in a multicultural community in the Artic. On the ground on empirical research it could be argued that ethnicity is done in everyday life, and come about through practices as gift giving. Following Kuokkanen (2006) the gift is an indigenous as well as gendered approach toward economy as well as landscape.  The paper argue that through the process of gift giving autonomy, identity and community that transgress ethnic boundaries are in the making - and these could be seen as (post)colonial local resistance.

March 6            Associate professor Rauna Kuokkanen, Sámi University College

Indigenous women, autonomy and globalization.

March 13          University lecturer Lill Tove Fredriksen, UiT

To sum up the course