AMST 427
Anticolonial Approaches to the Arts of Ancestral Indigenous Americans Fall 2024
Division II
Cross-listed ARTH 428

Approaches to the study of the arts of Ancestral Americans have traditionally emanated in both their conceptions and practices from settler colonialism, resulting in often hostile relations between investigators and descendant communities, the exclusion of Indigenous researchers, their sovereignties and knowledge regimes, and substantial distortions to historical understandings of the past. This course takes art histories of the Ancient Americas as its site for intervention as a means of introducing students to the oftentimes challenging labors of anticolonialism and the pursuit of the repair of past harms. Over the semester, students will learn how colonialism and its epistemologies have guided the formation of the field; how they can prioritize Indigenous and Native American ways of knowing and thinking in their understandings and research; how they can ethically conduct research without disturbing Ancestral American remains and the sovereignties of their descendants; and learn to make meaningful contributions to the projects of decolonization and repair.