This article explores the affordances and risks of practicing friendship and mentorship as methodological approaches in two qualitative studies: (a) the mentor's study in a diverse 9th grade classroom and (b) the protege's subsequent study of teacher professional development in the same school. Friendship methodology, as theorized by Tillmann and…

Recently, when preparing course materials for English graduate students on the practical skills and theoretical dimensions of teaching literature, the author surveyed the literature on the "state of the field" of literary studies in English (and the entire concept of a liberal arts education), ranging from high-profile monographs to various…

This essay derives from a course called ‘"The Rhetoric of Native America,’" which is a historical-critical survey of Native American primary texts. The course examines the rhetoric employed by Natives to enact social change and to build community in the face of exigencies. The main goal of exploring a native text (particularly, Simon…

Many students the author has taught get frustrated when they read Leslie Silko's canonical Native American novel, "Ceremony". Not only do they struggle with Silko's disruptions of linear temporality and her collapsing of binary oppositions, but they also struggle with the novel's geographic and cultural location. To help students better…

This article presents the author's response to Sam McKegney's "Strategies for Ethical Engagement: An Open Letter Concerning Non-Native Scholars of Native Literatures." In his response to Sam's diagnosis of the malaise currently afflicting non-Aboriginal critics of this literature, the author attempts to consider the "cure" Sam offers (albeit…

In Native American literary studies today there is a gap between the variety of criticism being produced and the metacritical debate about what Native literary criticism should look like. A review of recent issues of "Studies in American Indian Literatures", for example, will discover a wide variety of approaches, some relating literary…

Teaching American Indian literature with online resources can help diverse urban Indian and multicultural students connect with American Indian cultures, histories, and Nations. This online-enriched pedagogy adopts Susan Lobo's sense of the city as an "urban hub," or activist community center, an urban area linked to reservations in which Native…

The author's two main arguments in her discussion include: teaching and researching Native literatures within the disciplinary context of Native Studies enhances the understanding of these texts; vice versa, Native writers address topics that are intrinsic components in epistemological processes of decolonization promoted in a Native Studies…

Twenty-first-century skeptics would say that there are really no such things as beauty and truth and certainly not goodness. A Pueblo poet seemed to think there was--"the corn people have a song / it is very good"--and unless people think they know better, they'd better listen up. This article begins with a short piece, set down by the…

This article explores the benefits of verbal conflicts--contested storied spaces--in a Native American literature classroom composed of a multi-tribal and multicultural urban student body. Students in this course engage in whole-class verbal discussions focusing on contemporary and historical issues concerning Native American tribes and…

It is difficult to overestimate the differences between Native American studies in Europe and the United States. In Europe there are no dedicated university programs in Native American studies; instead, disciplinary units such as American studies or departments such as English, history, development studies, and anthropology house teaching and…

In this article, the author explains what he sees as the ironically disabling impact of some critical postures characterized by careful, self-reflexive distance undertaken by non-Native critics and then suggests a possible alternative direction for future critical interventions. The article presents the most popular strategies of ethical…

To speak about separatism as a Canadian is to use a loaded term, one that invokes a significant yet historically specific sociocultural moment. Winners and losers emerged, and in the process, the word "separatism" received a bad rap. Consequently, as a white Canadian who still believes in at least the optimism of the multiculturalist…

Louise Erdrich's early poem "The Strange People" portrays a dynamic understanding of gender echoed in many of her later fictive works. Narrated by a speaker who is half antelope, half woman, the poem details the relationship between a masculine hunter and his feminine prey. The poem suggests that gender is experienced as a wound, a site of…

In this paper, the author begins by saying how privileged he feels to be included in the celebration of the American Indian Culture and Research Journal (AICRJ) and to toast forty years of American Indian studies at UCLA. He looks back over the field of Native American literature and criticism, then peeks at the present, and last, makes some…