Courses for Spring 2027

Spring 2027  Native American and Indigenous Studies

Please see Professor Moore about attributes for these courses and using them in the NAIS minor. Either ANTH 1490 and HIST 1125 can be used as Core courses for the minor. Other courses here ; the others listed here may be arranged to fulfill NAIS Theme Course elective slots. Do you have an idea about a project that you'd like to undertake with an Native Peoples or Indigeneity theme? Consider requesting a course under ANTH 3999, Independent Research.  See Professor Moore. 

Core Course: ANTH 1490 Introduction to Native American and Indigenous Studies

This course offers a broad introduction to evolving scholarship in the combined fields of Native American Studies and Indigenous Studies worldwide. Students will examine the various ways that Indigenous peoples and academic researchers are currently engaging with Indigenous knowledges, while also exploring the lingering impacts of settler colonialism and the influence of decolonizing methodologies. Students will gain foundational understandings of the cross-disciplinary nature of Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS), by studying theoretical interpretations of Indigenous peoples in academic and historical contexts, and by examining practical approaches to Indigenous research in diverse worldwide settings. Students will approach topics from a variety of disciplinary traditions, utilizing historical texts, ethnological studies, oral literature, material culture, and modern media, including websites and databases produced by and for Indigenous communities. Readings will include the work of researchers who bridge the disciplines of anthropology, history, folklore, art, law, science, etc. Students will watch a selection of films by Indigenous filmmakers, and attend lectures by a selection of Indigenous guest speakers. NAIS faculty advisors from various schools at Penn (e.g., School of Arts and Sciences, Education, Law, Nursing) will also present several guest lectures to highlight their unique experiences and research projects with Indigenous communities. Special case studies will focus on: new directions in collaborative research; issues in museum representation and repatriation; heritage site protection and Indigenous archaeology; legal interventions and protections for Indigenous rights; and innovative projects in language restoration and cultural recovery. Attributes: AANI, AANA  Professor Tina Fragoso Schedule: Tu and Thursday, 3:30-4:59 pm 

Core Course: History 1125 Native American History

This course will introduce the history of North America’s Indigenous nations from the continent’s first peopling through the close of the twentieth century. We will analyze the basic sequence and consequence of events such as: pre-Columbian migrations; the development of settled North American societies; the establishment and spread of European colonies; the contestation of and alliance with imperial projects by Indigenous nations; the emergence of Indian racial and cultural identity; the formation of the United States, the process of “Indian Removal”; the creation of reservations; the growth of assimilative programs through residential schooling; and the rise of modern tribal bureaucracy. Particular attention will be paid to the various strategies employed by Indigenous nations across time to establish and uphold government-to-government relationships with Western powers. Throughout, we will assess the history of Native America as flowing through its own channels—ones now intertwined with, but discrete from, those of the United States. Attributes: AANI, AANA .  Professor Peter-Jacob Olsen Harbich.  Mon and Wed 1:45-3:14 pm

 NAIS THEME Courses

This undergraduate seminar compares the evolution of relations between States and Indigenous peoples and movements throughout the Americas, with a particular focus on the Mapuche people of the Patagonia region, in the south of nowadays Argentina and Chile. The main goal of the course is to comparatively study the organization of Indigenous communities and analyze their political demands regarding plurinationality, self-determination, territory, prior consultation, living well, and intercultural education and health, as well as the different ways in which States repress, ignore, or address such demands. The course starts by reviewing what does it mean to indigenize and decolonize the academy and political science. We then focus on the controversial question of who is Indigenous and comparatively assess the legal answer to this question in different countries of the Americas. Next, we tackle the issue of research methodology and positionality of the researcher, the ethics of studying Indigenous peoples, and using in-depth interviews as a tool for social science research. After briefly reviewing some of the consequences of the conquest and colonialism, we study the topic of global Indigenous rights and politics and from there we zoom in the politics of Indigenous peoples in Argentina, and the Mapuche of Neuquén, in particular. In the last part of the course, we delve into what are the main issues that Mapuche communities of Neuquén confront in the present: from territorial land claims, to interactions with extractive industries, co-management of natural resources with the National Parks Service, intercultural education, and intercultural health, among other topics. 

Professor Tulia Falleti, M 3:30pm-6:29pm

This course examines museums as sites where issues of Indigenous identity, memory, place and power intersect. Museums have long been engaged in the selective preservation, representation, and contextualization of Indigenous objects, cultures, and histories. We will examine antiquarian impulses that inspired the collecting of curiosities, scientific studies that drove the collection of biological specimens, and nationalist ideals that shaped monuments to house imperialist memories. Museums are now sites for complex, often contentious discourse around Indigenous collections. Students will review histories of local and national collecting processes, with a particular focus on Native American collections and concerns. We will also consider how Indigenous curators and new kinds of museums have developed innovative displays and interpretations. Professor Vanicleia Silva-Santos. MW 1:45pm-3:14pm

The course examines Indigenous education and language revitalization from an international perspective, considering questions like: What policies, ideologies, and discourses shape the history of Indigenous education? What roles do pan-Indigenous and international organizations play? What does decolonizing and Indigenizing schooling look like? How do Indigenous epistemologies, ways of knowing, being and relating influence education? What does culturally relevant schooling mean in Indigenous contexts? What are the roles of Indigenous communities in language revitalization and educational processes? Professor Robert Moore and Professor Robert Brenneman R 2pm-3:59pm See listing in path for enrollment advice.  

Also consider for NAIS Themed Course credit:  

This course thinks with and from Latin America to consider the environmental and ecological conflicts and politics of cuidado (care) emerging across the hemisphere in times of climate crisis and deepening socio-environmental injustice. Latin American thinkers and practitioners have provided innovative conceptual and methodological tools for analyzing, organizing, and acting in defense of territory and life. In this course, we will consider how legacies of colonialism and (neo)extractivism are not only an ongoing curse of the Americas, but also a a condition of possibility for feminist, decolonial, Indigenous, and ecological proposals, such as degrowth, buen vivir, cuerpo-territorio (body-territory), rights of nature, ontological politics, and participatory action research, among other ways of knowing, being, and doing. What can we learn from engagement with the historic and contemporary socioenvironmental challenges occurring across the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking Americas? How are diverse urban and rural communities, technoscientific actors, researchers, and ancestral knowers understanding and responding to the region’s emerging climate and environmental scenarios? What are the possibilities for dialogue, exchange, and problem solving between such diverse actors and their multiple ways of knowing and being that span millennial, colonial, and modernizing temporalities? Throughout the course, we will interrogate and reflect on these questions from the situated perspectives of Latin America and its many territorial realities, ecological relations, and social worlds.  Professor Kristina Lyons, W 1:45pm-4:44pm

Frantz Fanon (1963) writes that decolonization "sets out to change the order of the world." This course approaches decolonization in and around Education not as a "metaphor" for "civil and human rights-based social justice projects" couched in diversity, inclusion, and equity (Tuck and Yang 2012), but as part of a range of political projects and experiments that have sought to fundamentally reorder global structures, systems, and relations of power. Though prevailing philosophies about the meaning and purpose of Education cast schooling as a critical pathway to democratic, socially just, and inclusive societies, the historical foundations and contemporary realities of formal education in the Global South complicate theses ideals. For much of the formerly colonized world, Western education was one of the earliest and most enduring imperial projects, which deliberately undermined indigenous systems of knowing and learning in order to produce "good" subjects for incorporation into colonial regimes. Despite the promises of post-colonial nationhood, in most parts of the world, education still retains this function as the primary instrument of elite re/production and social stratification. And, yet, education is also typically imagined as central to decolonial and anti-imperial projects, improving social conditions, and forms of social and political belonging. This course interrogates histories and contemporary realities related to the politics and possibilities of Education from the vantage point of the Global South, which here signals a geography of relative geopolitical power indexing relations of development/underdevelopment, core/periphery, and empire/colony. By considering the various ways education has been part of decolonizing projects, we will investigate the relationships between education and indigenous ways of knowing and learning, colonialism, nationalism, conflict, class re/production, spatial and social mobilities, among other thematic strands. Moreover, in centering the periphery, we will explore the theoretical openings that "theory from the (Global) South" offers for decolonial epistemologies and pedagogies. Professor Laurn Lefty, R 9:30am-11:29am

MUSC 1500  World Musics

This course examines how we as consumers in the "Western" world engage with musical difference largely through the products of the global entertainment industry. We examine music cultures in contact in a variety of ways-- particularly as traditions in transformation. Students gain an understanding of traditional music as live, meaningful person-to-person music making, by examining the music in its original site of production, and then considering its transformation once it is removed, and recontextualized in a variety of ways. The purpose of the course is to enable students to become informed and critical consumers of "World Music" by telling a series of stories about particular recordings made with, or using the music of, peoples culturally and geographically distant from the US. Students come to understand that not all music downloads containing music from unfamiliar places are the same, and that particular recordings may be embedded in intriguing and controversial narratives of production and consumption. At the very least, students should emerge from the class with a clear understanding that the production, distribution, and consumption of world music is rarely a neutral process. Fulfills College Cross Cultural Foundational Requirement. Lectures MW 8:30-10 or Tues Th 10:15-11:45. 

QUEC 0200 Elementary Quechua II

Quechua, the language of the Inca Empire and still spoken by approximately 6 million people throughout the Andes, is the most popular indigenous language of South America. The program focuses on the development of written and oral communicative abilities in Quechua through an interactive activity-based approach. Course includes an introduction to Quechua and Andean culture. Students will participate in pair, small-group and whole-class activities. Assessment is based on both students ability to use the language in written and oral tasks and understanding the language and culture. This beginning level Quechua course is designed for students who have little or no previous knowledge of the language. Lectures will be delivered in English and Quechua. Professor Jesus Rivera Guzman,  T, TH 5:15-6:44 pm