2023-2024 Course Catalog
Welcome to Virginia Tech! We are excited that you are here planning your time as a Hokie.
Welcome to Virginia Tech! We are excited that you are here planning your time as a Hokie.
Introduction to the historical richness and complexity of American Indian societies. Examination of American Indian identities, worldviews, past and present sustainability practices, experiences with and resistance to colonial domination and policies, and cultural interchanges with non-Indians.
Examination of the worlds great oral traditions, both ancient and contemporary. Emphasis on performance contexts, relationships among multicultural traditions, including American Indian oral traditions, and the relationships among orality, literacy, technology, media, and culture.
Examines histories of persons representing different social identities, statuses, space, place, and traditions in agricultural and life sciences. Explores how differences influence experiences individuals may have in agricultural and life sciences. Apply ethical reasoning practices to recognize and addresses critical issues surrounding inclusion of diverse populations within agricultural and life sciences education and leadership.
This course offers a sampling of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction by the most influential American Indian writers since 1970, authors such as Momaday, Silko, Deloria, Welch, Harjo, and Alexie. Students will also learn about those aspects of cosmology and storytelling traditionally shared by all American Indian Nations, as well as about those aspects specific to the individual tribal traditions from which the authors and their characters come.
The Native experience in North America or Latin America from 1491 to present. Emphasis on social diversity and organization, resistance to colonization, leadership and cultural change, and political sovereignty among indigenous peoples. Methods for interpreting a variety of primary sources, including texts, material culture, and archaeological findings. Engagements with shifting historiographical perspectives and political movements for recognition of Native sovereignty.
Food sovereignty, the right to produce and consume culturally relevant food, as a set of practices and as a social movement through comparative case studies. Origins of food sovereignty in response to effects of colonialism, the green revolution, and the global corporate food system on peasant and Indigenous subsistence livelihoods and the concept’s transformation through dialogue with indigenous agricultural knowledge and poor peoples’ environmentalism. Food sovereignty’s challenge to the dominant food system and conceptions of development, how groups implement this vision of democratized social and productive relations through projects of agroecology and land reform, and its potential in the context of ecological calamity.
Study of the structures of the native languages of the Americas; their interrelationships; their use in individual speech communities; contact with other languages; the interrelationships of linguistic structure, culture, and thought; their future survival.
A survey of the historical and contemporary struggles of indigenous peoples throughout the world. Examines the dynamics of colonialism (internal and external), identity construction, gender, cultural integrity, and the ongoing global indigenous rights discourse. In addition to covering broad global processes/theoretical approaches, comparative case studies of particular indigenous groups, such as the Maasai (Kenya, Tanzania) and Mayans (Mexico, Guatemala, Belize), are used to highlight the global, regional, and intra-community diversity among contemporary indigenous peoples.
A variable topics course in which students will engage an interdisciplinary methodology to pursue a critical and in-depth examination of various topics concerning and pertinent to American indigenous peoples. This course is repeatable for up to 6 hours credit with different topics. Must meet prerequisite or have permission of the instructor.
Examines American Indian worldviews and human-Nature relationships within the context of a dominant non-Indigenous society, through land-based learning including foraging and cultivation. Introduces and contrasts Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and Scientific Ecological Knowledge (SEK). Encourages the equitable inclusion of Indigenous peoples’ practices in the human and environmental sustainability of our collective future, with attention to decolonization and global Indigenous struggles for justice. Student engagement opportunities in hands-on foraging, seed saving, cultivation, and projects around food sovereignty, food security, and revitalization of traditional foodways, in collaboration with local Native communities.
Print this page.
The PDF will include all information unique to this page.