Since
1997 I have taught
courses in American culture and literature at UiTø.
I came to Tromsø from Minneapolis, where I did my PhD. in
the Program in American Studies at the University of
Minnesota. In my dissertation I
explored the issue of autobiographical writing as
a tool for interpreting gender, American history, and the politics of
performance art in twentieth century American culture.
In the past nine years in Tromsø, my research
interests have expanded to include life
narratives in written, oral, and visual forms, indigenous and
African American literatures, and collective memory. I have
learned much from my masters thesis students, who have written on
issues ranging from nineteenth and twentieth century Canadian
and American
women writers, to ethnic autobiography, Native American novelists,
diaspora consciousness, and identity formation in oral and
written life narratives.
RESEARCH
My current research project is a series of
interconnected articles on Mediating
Wor(l)ds: Narrative Identity and
the Ethics of Representation in North American Indigenous
Writing.
The term “cultural mediation” has been applied widely to describe the
goals of writers and readers of indigenous/aboriginal literatures
of North America since the late 1960s. My purpose is
to understand the term as a more specific discursive practice in order
develop a methodology for reading indigenous literatures that can
address the tension between the struggle for justice and peace.
In my analysis of texts published for a broad readership in English,
and to a smaller extent in French, I ask questions including: Who
defines what indigenous literature are in relation to specific contexts
of events? For whom have these texts made a difference, and in what
situations? How have they been used for different purposes, depending
on place, time, and language? Theoretically, recent discussions of
indigenous methodologies, postcolonial theory, and theories
of gender and agency are especially relevant for my study, as is Paul
Ricoeur's hermeneutics of narrative identity and his discussions of the
ethics of collective memory.
This study is relevant for cultural studies, indigenous studies, and
studies in peace and conflict transformation.
Some of the authors I have, or plan to publish articles about include:
Sherman Alexie
Heid Erdrich
Louise Erdrich
Linda Hogan
Winona LaDuke
Rita Mestokosho
Leslie Marmon Silko
Native
American Authors
Innu
Aitun
Although I started the project with a theoretical basis in postcolonial
theories and gendered theories of agency, my indigenous studies
students and colleagues have challenged me to ask about the ways in
which indigenous epistemologies need to be at the center of the work,
to the extent to which these can be translated into Western
forms.
Another increasingly important influence on my work is the philosopher Paul Ricoeur.
(See also "Le voyage
philosophique de Paul Ricoeur").
His discussions, of
narrative and personal identity, history and truth, and the ethics of
collective memory and forgetting, have been changing the way I
think about authors, readers, and texts. What is perhaps
most important is how various
theoretical principles of
understanding might relate to the ways in which actual readers make
sense of texts, and what we do with those texts in the world.
This study is relevant for
cultural studies, indigenous studies, and studies in peace and
conflict transformation.
TEACHING
Fall 2006 I teach two courses in the Faculty of
Humanities: an intermediate level course in American Life
Narratives (ENG2109), and an advanced level course on Toni Morrison and
the
African American Literary Tradition (ENG3103). I also co-teach
part of a
course in Indigenous methods and methodologies in the Faculty of Social
Sciences (SVF3026).
ENG2109
Handouts Week 34:
Genres of biography,
history, the novel v. autobiography.
Design and
autobiography.
Truth and
autobiography (for analysis of example from Janet Campbell Hale, Bloodlines pp. 84-87.
Handouts Week 35:
Questions for
discussion for Eva Hoffman, Lost in
Translation.
A partial dictionary of Hoffman's literary,
historical, pop cultural references.
Week 36: Transparency on Memory, history,
collective memory.
(No handouts this week).
Handouts Week 37:
Janet Campbell Hale biography
In-class writing
assignment (on Hale's Bloodlines)
Handouts Week 38:
More questions for discussion
for Bloodlines
Definitions of ideology
and the ideological "I"
Handout Week 39:
Short paper topics.
Week 40:
Study week. No regular class.
Handouts Week 41:
Questions for
discussion for Maya Angelou's I Know
Why the Caged Bird Sings.
Selected poems
by Maya Angelou.
Handouts Week 42:
Links to ethos,
pathos, logos as ways of reading the narrating "I".
(Note: the pdf file available from the link is more complete).
Handouts Week 43:
Summary of lecture on communities of memory.
Handouts Week 44:
Questions for
discussion for Julia Alvarez's Something
to Declare.
Handouts Week 45:
Questions for
discussion for Julia Alvarez's How
the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents.
2109 semester paper
topics.
ENG3103
Handouts Week 35:
Questions for The Bluest Eye
Class notes (on
Eva Lennox Birch) for Week 36.
Handouts Week 36:
Oral presentation
assignment.
Handouts Week 37:
In-class writing
assignment (on Alan Alexander's "Fourth Face").
Handouts Week 38:
Introduction to Song of Solomon and
questions for discussion (to Chap.11).
Handouts Week 39:
Short paper
assignment.
Week 40:
Study week. No regular class.
Handouts Week 42:
Questions for discussion
of Beloved.
Handouts Week 45:
Introduction to Jazz.
Questions for
discussion of Jazz.
Semester paper
topics for ENG3103.
SVF3026
SVF3026readings
Handouts Week 34:
Joy Harjo, "Letter from
the end of the 20th Century."
Questions for discussion
of Joy Harjo, "Letter from the end of the 20th Century."
Questions for
discussion of Leslie Marmon Silko, "Storyteller."
Introduction to
indigenous literatures.
Handouts Spildra seminar (Week 37: 16 September, 2006)
What does indigenous literature do?
Some examples.
Questions for
discussion of extracts from "Luleju - a poem by Elle Hansa."
My teaching in the past
has included courses in American literature/culture at all
levels, and Indigenous literature and culture at the masters level:
Graduate level:
*Rhetoric and the Humanities (co-taught). Ph.D. interdisciplinary
course, Humanities.
*Representations and
Self-Representations (co-taught). M.A. course,
Indigenous Studies.
M.A. courses in English literature/culture:
*The Multicultural Detective Novel
in America.
*Toni Morrison and the African American Literary Tradition.
*Ways of Knowing in Short
Fiction. M.A. course.
*Writing America in Oral Traditions: Myths, Histories, and Collective
Memories.
*Crossing Borders in Contemporary Critical Practice.
*Sites of Memory: Story and History in 20th Century American
Autobiography.
*American Progress and Paradox at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.
Undergraduate level:
*American Life Narratives (for intermediate level students)
*The African-American Literary Tradition:
Literature and the City
(intermediate level)
*Mimesis, Myth, and History: Narrating the Living World in America
(intermediate level)
*Survival and Subversion: Indigenous Literatures of North America
(intermediate level)
*Native American Literatures (intermediate level)
*Art and Politics of Telling the truth in American Autobiography
(intermediate level)
*Survey of American Literature and Culture (co-taught, beginning level)
*Introduction to American Narrative (co-taught, beginning level)
CV November 2006
LINKS
American Studies Crossroads
Kvinnforsk at
UiTø
The Nation
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