Weill Medical College of Cornell University · Courses
AIIS
37 courses with the subject AIIS, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
AIIS 1100Indigenous North America4
This course provides an interdisciplinary introduction to the diverse cultures, histories and contemporary situations of the Indigenous peoples of North America. Students will also be introduced to important themes in the post-1492 engagement between Indigenous and settler populations in North America and will consider the various and complex ways in which that history affected - and continues to affect - American Indian peoples and societies. Course materials draw on the humanities, social sciences, and expressive arts.
AIIS 1110Indigenous Issues in Global Perspectives3
This course attends to the contemporary issues, contexts and experiences of Indigenous peoples. Students will develop a substantive understanding of colonialism and engage in the parallels and differences of its histories, forms, and effects on Indigenous peoples globally. Contemporary Indigenous theorists, novelists, visual artists and historians have a prominent place in the course, highlighting sociocultural and environmental philosophies, critical responses to and forms of resistance toward neocolonial political and economic agendas and the fundamental concern for Indigenous self-determination, among other topics. We will not only examine the history of victimization of indigenous peoples through colonial oppression, but we will also study their response as agents of change in providing alternative paradigms and insights to humanity in the third millennium.
This course explores the wide variety of languages indigenous to the Americas. There were thousands of languages spoken in the Americas before the arrival of Europeans and hundreds of these languages are still spoken today. We will look at several of these languages in terms of their linguistic structure as well as from social, historical, and political perspectives. No prior linguistic background is required and no previous knowledge of any Native American languages is presumed.
This introductory course surveys archaeology's contributions to the study of American Indian cultural diversity and change in North America north of Mexico. Lectures and readings will examine topics ranging from the debate over when the continent was first inhabited to present-day conflicts between Native Americans and archaeologists over excavation and the interpretation of the past. We will review important archaeological sites such as Chaco Canyon, Cahokia, Lamoka Lake, and the Little Bighorn battlefield. A principal focus will be on major transformations in lifeways such as the adoption of agriculture, the development of political-economic hierarchies, and the disruptions that accompanied the arrival of Europeans to the continent.
AIIS 2420Nature-Culture: Ethnographic Approaches to Human Environment Relations4
One of the most pressing questions of our time is how we should understand the relationship between nature, or the environment, and culture, or society, and whether these should be viewed as separate domains at all. How one answers this question has important implications for how we go about thinking and acting in such diverse social arenas as environmental politics, development, and indigenous-state relations. This course serves as an introduction to the various ways anthropologists and other scholars have conceptualized the relationship between humans and the environment and considers the material and political consequences that flow from these conceptualizations.
AIIS 2600Introduction to Native American Literature3
The production of North American Indigenous literatures began long before European colonization, and persists in a variety of printed, sung, carved, painted, written, spoken, and digital media. From oral traditions transmitted through memory and mnemonics to contemporary genres and media, Native North American authors offer Indigenous perspectives on social, political, and environmental experience, through deft artistry and place-specific aesthetics. Our attention will focus on the contexts from which particular Native American literatures emerge, the ethics to consider when entering Indigenous intellectual territory, and close attention to common themes and techniques that frequently appear in contemporary Native American literature. Readings will feature a range of novels, poetry, short fiction, graphic novel/comics, and film. (ENGL-LOA, ENGL-PST)
AIIS 2660Everything You Know About Indians is Wrong: Unlearning Native American History3
One thing many Americans think they know is their Indians: Pocahontas, the First Thanksgiving, fighting cowboys, reservation poverty, and casino riches. Under our very noses, however, Native American history has evolved into one of the most exciting, dynamic, and contentious fields of inquiry into America's past. It is now safer to assume, as Comanche historian Paul Chaat Smith has pointed out, that everything you know about Indians is in fact wrong. Most people have much to unlearn about Native American history before true learning can take place. This course aims to achieve that end by (re)introducing students to key themes and trends in the history of North America's indigenous nations. Employing an issues-oriented approach, the course stresses the ongoing complexity of Native American societies' engagements with varieties of settler colonialism since 1492 and dedicates itself to a concerted program of myth-busting. As such, the course will provide numerous opportunities for students to develop their critical thinking and reading skills. (HIST-HNA, HIST-HPE)
AIIS 2720From the Swampy Land: Indigenous People of the Ithaca Area3
Who lived in the Ithaca area before American settlers and Cornell arrived? Where do these indigenous peoples reside today? This class explores the history and culture of the Gayogoho:no (Cayuga), which means people from the mucky land. We will read perspectives by indigenous authors, as well as archaeologists and historians, about past and current events, try to understand reasons why that history has been fragmented and distorted by more recent settlers, and delve into primary sources documenting encounters between settlers and the Gayogoho:no. We will also strive to understand the ongoing connections of the Gayogoho:no to this region despite forced dispossession and several centuries of colonialist exclusion from these lands and waters.
AIIS 3248Finger Lakes and Beyond: Archaeology of the Native Northeast3
This course provides a long-term overview of the indigenous peoples of Cornell's home region and their neighbors from an archaeological perspective. Cornell students live and work in the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee, or Six Nations Iroquois, and this class will help residents to understand the deep history of this place. We will examine long-term changes in material culture, settlement, subsistence, and trade; the founding of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy; indigenous responses to European and American colonization; the practicalities of doing indigenous-site archaeology in New York State; and contemporary indigenous perspectives on archaeology. Visits to local archaeological sites and museum collections will supplement classroom instruction.
An introduction to the language and culture of the Cayuga (Gayogo_hó:no?) people. Basic language instruction provided in an immersive learning environment, focusing on the relationship of language and culture to plants and growing.
A continuation of LING 3324, with further exploration of Cayuga (Gayogo_hó:no?) language and culture. Language instruction continues in an immersive learning environment with a focus on plants and growing in the spring.
AIIS 3330Ways of Knowing: Indigenous and Place-Based Ecological Knowledge3
Based on indigenous and place-based ways of knowing, this course (1) presents a theoretical and humanistic framework from which to understand generation of ecological knowledge; (2) examines processes by which to engage indigenous and place-based knowledge of natural resources, the nonhuman environment, and human-environment interactions; and (3) reflects upon the relevance of this knowledge to climatic change, resource extraction, food sovereignty, medicinal plant biodiversity, and issues of sustainability and conservation. The fundamental premise of this course is that human beings are embedded in their ecological systems.
AIIS 3422Culture, Politics, and Environment in the Circumpolar North3
This course examines the cultures and histories of the circumpolar North. The primary emphasis is on the North American Arctic and Subarctic with some attention to northern Eurasia for comparative purposes. The focus is on the indigenous peoples of the region and the socio-political and ecological dimensions of their evolving relationships with southern industrial societies.
The first half of the course will be devoted to situating Indigenous peoples, of which there are 476,000,000 globally, in an international context, where we will examine the proposition that Indigenous people are involved historically in a global resistance against an ongoing colonialism. The second half will present a specific case of this war: settler colonialism in Palestine/Israel with a particular emphasis on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) finding plausible the South African assertion of genocide in Gaza.
AIIS 3560Thinking from a Different Place: Indigenous Philosophies3
The Western nation-state has failed to solve the two most pressing, indeed catastrophic, global problems: poverty and climate change. This failure is due to the inability of national policy to imagine a world beyond a boundary drawn by the formative capitalist ideas of property, production, and profit. The course will begin by discussing the historical origin and continuing force of these ideas while raising questions about their limits. Then it will look at a range of alternative ideas about how the world should work if we want to keep it socially, economically, and ecologically in balance. The alternatives we will query come from a range of Indigenous writers of fiction, poetry, and theory, who locate themselves in Native American (north and south), Aboriginal, and Maori communities.
AIIS 4000Critical Approaches to American Indian and Indigenous Studies: Intellectual History3
An interdisciplinary survey of the literature in Native American Studies. Readings engage themes of indigeneity, coloniality, power, and resistance. The syllabus is formed from some classic and canonical works in Native American Studies but also requires an engagement with marginal writings and theoretical and historical contributions from scholars in other disciplines.
AIIS 4200Locke and the Philosophies of Dispossession: Indigenous America's Interruptions and Resistances3
This course looks at the philosopher John Locke as a philosopher of dispossession. There is a uniquely Lockean mode of missionization, conception of mind and re-formulations of the 'soul' applied to dispossess Indigenous peoples of the social institutions, intellectual traditions and the material bases and practices which sustain(ed) them. While colonization is typically used as a kind of shorthand for this process, we will be attempting to stay focused on the specific dimensions of Lockean dispossession and its mutually informing relationship with English colonialism.
AIIS 4300Indigenous Peoples and Decolonial Philosophies3
Indigenous Peoples and De-Colonial Philosophies explores the formulations of de-colonization from multiple intellectual trajectories - namely the Fanonian, Latin American and Settler Colonial Studies orientations. The course pays particular attention to some of the central tenants elaborated across these traditions that provide for the philosophies of de-colonizing, placing them in critical conversation with American Indian and Indigenous scholarship. It will examine the differences and commonalities within and across these philosophies for de-colonization, with particular attention to how they describe relations to land and the political, socio-cultural practices for animating de-colonial present(s) and futures.
AIIS 4450Settler Colonialism And The Elimination of the Native3
Settler Colonialism And The Elimination of the Native: The course title is taken from Patrick Wolfe's generative essay, which analyzes the specific genre of colonialism in which the object is the replacement of the native (original) population by settlers, whose goal is the appropriation of native land through various forms of violence from genocide to forced assimilation. The particular focus of this course will be the forms settler colonialism takes in the United States against the American Indian population and in Israeli-dominated Palestine against the indigenous Palestinian population and the resistance to settler colonialism by these populations. The course, then, is comparative in method, beginning with analyzing the common biblical origin, that of the Chosen People, that generated the settler ideologies in both the U.S. and Israel.
If you haven't read contemporary U.S. American Indian fiction, then it might be fair to ask how much you know about the United States, its origins and its current condition. Since the 1960s, American Indians have been producing a significant body of award-wining novels and short stories. In 1969, for example, N. Scott Momaday, from the Kiowa nation, won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel House Made of Dawn and in 2012 Louise Erdrich, who is Anishinaabe, won the National Book Award for her novel The Round House. In between these two notable moments and since we can list an impressive number of Native storytellers whose work is aesthetically powerful, offering us a narrative of the United States that counters the official history. Centrally the course will focus on the various formal approaches Native writers take from surrealism to realism in representing the (post)colonial situation of Indian country and the ongoing resistance in Indian country to the U.S. legal and political regime.
In this course, we will read poems of resistance from Indigenous people in Turtle Island (North America), Palestine, and Gu?n (Guam). Our purpose will be to understand how this poetry is both a description and an act of resistance to settler colonialism and to compare the forms resistance takes in these different settler locals.
AIIS 4674Dispossession, Truth, and Reconciliation3
The dispossession of Indigenous nations by Europeans represents the foundation of the past five centuries of North American history. Yet the truth of that history remains cloaked behind various Western legal-religious justifications for the dispossession of lndigenous American populations by Europeans (i.e., terra nullius, the Doctrine of Discovery, the right of conquest, and Manifest Destiny). Through analysis of primary texts and up-to-date historical and legal scholarship, students in this course will unpack these still-thriving tropes of settler-colonial justification for dispossession, assess the true impact of the taking of Indigenous lands, and explore prospects for meaningful reconciliation in the present. (HIST-HNA)
AIIS 4720Archaeology of Colonialism and Cultural Entanglement3
This seminar uses archaeology to examine engagements between settlers and indigenous peoples throughout world history. Archaeology provides a perspective on settler-indigenous encounters that both supplements and challenges conventional models. We will assess the strengths and weaknesses of various theories of cultural engagement, examine methodologies, and explore a series of archaeological case studies, using examples from both the ancient world and the European expansion over the past 600 years. The seminar provides a comparative perspective on indigenous-colonial relationships, in particular exploring the hard-fought spaces of relative autonomy created and sustained by indigenous peoples. (ARKEO-TM)
AIIS 4940Special Topics in Am. Indian and Indigenous Study1-3
The department teaches trial courses under this number. Offerings vary by semester and are advertised by the department before the semester begins. The same course is not offered more than twice under this number.
AIIS 6000Critical Approaches to American Indian and Indigenous Studies: Intellectual History3
An interdisciplinary survey of the literature in Native American Studies. Readings engage themes of indigeneity, coloniality, power, and resistance. The syllabus is formed from some classic and canonical works in Native American Studies but also requires an engagement with marginal writings and theoretical and historical contributions from scholars in other disciplines.
AIIS 6010American Indian and Indigenous Studies Speaker Series1
Graduate-level course that introduces students to ongoing research in the field of American Indian and Indigenous Studies in a proseminar/colloquium format. Advanced graduate students are expected to present their work in progress; all are expected to attend each seminar and provide presenters with critical and constructive commentary on papers.
AIIS 6200Locke and the Philosophies of Dispossession: Indigenous America's Interruptions and Resistances3
This course looks at the philosopher John Locke as a philosopher of dispossession. There is a uniquely Lockean mode of missionization, conception of mind and re-formulations of the 'soul' applied to dispossess Indigenous peoples of the social institutions, intellectual traditions and the material bases and practices which sustain(ed) them. While colonization is typically used as a kind of shorthand for this process, we will be attempting to stay focused on the specific dimensions of Lockean dispossession and its mutually informing relationship with English colonialism.
This course explores the wide variety of languages indigenous to the Americas. There were thousands of languages spoken in the Americas before the arrival of Europeans and hundreds of these languages are still spoken today. We will look at several of these languages in terms of their linguistic structure as well as from social, historical, and political perspectives. No prior linguistic background is required and no previous knowledge of any Native American languages is presumed.
AIIS 6248Finger Lakes and Beyond: Archaeology of the Native Northeast3
This course provides a long-term overview of the indigenous peoples of Cornell's home region and their neighbors from an archaeological perspective. Cornell students live and work in the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee, or Six Nations Iroquois, and this class will help residents to understand the deep history of this place. We will examine long-term changes in material culture, settlement, subsistence, and trade; the founding of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy; indigenous responses to European and American colonization; the practicalities of doing indigenous-site archaeology in New York State; and contemporary indigenous perspectives on archaeology. Visits to local archaeological sites and museum collections will supplement classroom instruction.
AIIS 6300Indigenous Peoples and Decolonial Philosophies3
Indigenous Peoples and De-Colonial Philosophies explores the formulations of de-colonization from multiple intellectual trajectories - namely the Fanonian, Latin American and Settler Colonial Studies orientations. The course pays particular attention to some of the central tenants elaborated across these traditions that provide for the philosophies of de-colonizing, placing them in critical conversation with American Indian and Indigenous scholarship. It will examine the differences and commonalities within and across these philosophies for de-colonization, with particular attention to how they describe relations to land and the political, socio-cultural practices for animating de-colonial present(s) and futures.
AIIS 6422Culture, Politics, and Environment in the Circumpolar North3
This course examines the cultures and histories of the circumpolar North. The primary emphasis is on the North American Arctic and Subarctic with some attention to northern Eurasia for comparative purposes. The focus is on the indigenous peoples of the region and the socio-political and ecological dimensions of their evolving relationships with southern industrial societies.
The course will focus on the basics of Federal Indian Law, the ever-changing body of case and statutory law and treaties that define the limits and extent of Indian tribal sovereignty in the United States in the late twentieth century. The course will explore the nature and extent of tribal sovereignty at the time of European contact, the changing strategies of the United States in relating to tribes, and the lasting impact of those strategies on current-day tribal communities and their rights of self-government. The course will also explore the role of the United States in protecting tribal sovereignty and tribal resources. It will also examine the powers and jurisdiction of tribal governments with regard to both members and non-members of the tribe, as well as the lack or extent, as the case may be, of state jurisdiction over activities on Indian lands. Students will be encouraged to continually identify and question the legal, political and moral basis of the laws and policies that constitute Federal Indian Law in the United States today. We will also examine the current ALI restatement project for Federal Indian Law.
AIIS 6454Haudenosaunee - New York State Relations3
This course is focused on the modern-day relationship between the Haudenosaunee and New York State. The first part of the course will introduce students to the historical relationship prior to the formation of the United States. The second part will be dedicated to the exploration of foundation legal and political principles governing the intergovernmental relationship. And the last part will focus on case studies of contemporary issues and conflicts.
AIIS 6970Independent Study in American Indian and Indigenous Studies1-4
A student may, with approval of a faculty advisor, study a problem or topic not covered in a regular course or may undertake tutorial study of an independent nature in an area of interest in American Indian and Indigenous Studies.
AIIS 7720Archaeology of Colonialism and Cultural Entanglement3
This seminar uses archaeology to examine engagements between settlers and indigenous peoples throughout world history. Archaeology provides a perspective on settler-indigenous encounters that both supplements and challenges conventional models. We will assess the strengths and weaknesses of various theories of cultural engagement, examine methodologies, and explore a series of archaeological case studies, using examples from both the ancient world and the European expansion over the past 600 years. The seminar provides a comparative perspective on indigenous-colonial relationships, in particular exploring the hard-fought spaces of relative autonomy created and sustained by indigenous peoples.
