Programs and Areas

For thousands of years, the Indigenous peoples of North America developed complex systems of oral and pictographic literatures, music, dance, and other arts. Since the 18th century, they also have produced a steady stream of writing in English and Indigenous languages. Contemporary American Indian writers work in all genres and media. Defying stereotypes, the texts they create are at once traditional and innovative, political and playful, conservative and subversive. In the 1970s, American Indian literary studies began to develop as a distinct area of scholarship within the interdisciplinary field of American Indian studies, and it maintains strong links to history, anthropology, linguistics, political science, art and performance studies, and legal studies. Over the past two decades, American Indian literary studies has also become increasingly comparative—both across the Americas and around the globe—becoming a key component of the emerging field of Indigenous literary studies.