Max Abner

R1A: Indigeneity and Whiteness

22 June 2021
Scaffolding

Week Writing Due (usually due on Bcourses each In Class Work on Writing
Friday at 5PM) (usually one day a week, while the
other day more focused on
discussing reading)

1 (Thurs. Intro
only)

2 0. (comment response) Note-Taking Exercise

3 1.A (completion check) “Where is the thesis?” Workshop

(based on a reading and 1-2
students’ 0-Assignment drafts)

4 1.B (completion check) Mapping an Argument Workshop

5 1.C (completion check) Seminar w/ Student 1.B Material

6 1.D (completion check) Seminar w/ Student 1.C Material

7 1.E (graded) Studio for asking questions about

and finishing 1.E

8 2.A (completion check) Conferences about Last Paper and

Upcoming Proposal

9 2.B (completion check) Seminar (on readings?)

10 2.C (completion check) Seminar on Notes→ Outline

11 2.D (completion check) Writing Studio

12 (Tues. 2.E (completion check) Peer Review Workshop

only)

13 2.F (completion check) Conferences for Discussing 2.E and

2.F

14 (Tues. Prepare Presentation 10 Minute Presentations on Paper

only) Topics (graded)
 15 2.G due between December 3rd and December 10 Minute Presentations on Paper
17th (graded) Topics (graded)

Reading Notes:

I will most likely make this a two novel class, along with a smattering of shorter
theoretical/scholarly texts. As of now, the reading schedule will look something like:

-Ceremony during weeks 2-4

-The Education of Little Tree during weeks 5-8
-4-6 theoretical/scholarly texts primarily during weeks 1 and 9-10

Assignments:
0. 1-2 page essay in which students describe and briefly make an original argument
about a part of or all of either Link Wray’s album Link Wray or Buffy Sainte-Marie’s
album Illuminations.
1.A. Active Art Object Reading Notes:
This is the first mini assignment leading to the first Graded Paper.
This is a document in which students record their notes from a given reading:
important quotations, points of confusion, points of agreement/excitement, and
points of disagreement/disappointment.
1.B. Active Theory Reading Notes:
This assignment is identical to 1.A., though it deals with a theoretical or critical
text.
1.C. Ekphrasis #1: Art Object / Aesthetic Text
This is a 1-2 page thick description.
1.D. Ekphrasis #2: Theoretical / Critical Text
This is a 1-2 page thick description of a theoretical/critical text with an emphasis
on formal analysis and an understanding of such texts as contextually and
aesthetically bounded objects (as opposed to objective, universal texts from a
God’s eye perspective).
1.E Short Paper on a Small Object (see “Main (Graded) Writing Projects”)
2.A. Proposal:
This is a 1-2 page paper in which students outline one primary text and 2 or more
theoretical or critical texts that they would like to work with in their final paper. If
they feel they have the beginnings of a thesis or argument, they should begin to
express those ideas here.
2.B. Active Notes:
This assignment is identical to 1.A./1.B.. It is a chance for students to really focus
on making sure they have the materials that they need to go into paper writing
 without feeling that they are grappling with the blank screen.
2.C. Organize and Expand Notes:
Students should look through their organized notes with the intent to find patterns,
the beginnings of arguments, and quotations that seem to be in dialogue. Students
should begin to rearrange their notes into a kind of spontaneous outline for a
paper, and then they should begin to free write in a manner that expands the notes
and sees them come together.
2.D. First Draft
The “first draft” should not look like notes or an outline, though small chunks of it
might look like notes or an outline. It will contain a full (if not entirely coherent)
argument, and it will be roughly 10 pages.
2.E. Peer Review
Read a physical copy or a google doc version of a peer’s paper. Make markings
throughout the paper; mark moments of confusion, moments where you agree
with the text, moments of beauty, moments where the text excites you, moments
with clunky language, spelling/grammatical mistakes, and moments that feel
incomplete or remind you of a reading that is not cited but might be. At the end of
the paper, write 2-3 paragraphs in which you briefly summarize the author’s topic,
argument, and strategy. Then, briefly outline the strengths and weaknesses of the
paper as you see them.
2.F. Reflection on Peer Review Workshop and Plan for Revisions, 1-2 pages.
2.G. Final Draft
Rework your draft. Use your peer review notes that feel helpful and disregard
those that you feel are not correct for your project. The goal is to enhance your
argument. Make it clear, simple, and persuasive. Make it converse with other
readings, but ground it in your original ideas. This is not (just) about fixing
spelling and grammatical errors. This is about being ruthless with your paper.
Moving sections. Cutting sections. Writing new sections. All in the name of
making your original argument as strong as possible.

Main (Graded) Writing Projects:

1. Short Paper on a Small Object
a. Students must maintain an original argument about a small aesthetic object or an
essay over the course of 4-5 pages. The paper must focus on materials and ideas
covered in the course.
2. Longer Paper on a Larger Object
a. Students must maintain an original argument about a larger object over the course
of 10-12 pages.
b. Students must engage in an in-depth dialogue with 2 or more other theorists
and/or critics in the course of their argument about the object.
(Potential) Objects:
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
“Fish Wars” from The Beadworkers by Beth Piatote
The Bearheart Chronicles by Gerald Vizenor
The Falcon by John Tanner
The Education of Little Tree by Forrest Carter
The Reconstruction of Asa Carter (documentary) by Marco Ricci
Dead Man (film) by Jim Jarmusch
Evil Dead (film) by Sam Rami
Link Wray (album) by Link Wray
Illuminations (album) by Buffy Sainte-Marie

(Potential) Theoretical Texts:

Introductions from:
Playing Indian by Philip J. Deloria
Going Native by Shari M. Huhndorf
Empires Tracks by Manu Karuka
Transit of Empire by Jodi Byrd
The Archive and the Repertoire by Diana Taylor
Cities of the Dead by Joseph Roach
Essays:
“Situated Knowledges” by Donna Haraway
“Introduction to Critical Ethnography” by D. Soyini Madison
 Course Overview

The colonial, Imperialist project that is “America'' has historically developed itself out of the
drama of “Cowboys and Indians”—or, less euphemistically, Indigeneity and Whiteness. This
drama unfolds both in the aesthetic realms of literature, visual media, and theatre and the
everyday realm. Moreover, as with many dramas, dialogue is key here. In our readings, we will
track both literal and meta dialogues. For instance, Laguna-Pueblo writer Leslie Marmon Silko
incited a critical dialogue with the markedly White canon of the Western by writing her classic
Indigenous text Ceremony partly in the Western style. Conversely, the Ku Klux Klan leader Asa
Carter culminated his white supremacist project with a violent dialogue with Indigeneity in
which he transformed himself (both in life and in books) into Forrest Carter, the sacharine, White
fantasy of a nostalgic, Indigenous storyteller. Obviously, in a literal sense, White folks and
Indigenous communities existed before colonial contact, but the cultural artifacts that we will be
analyzing together (including the two above examples) reveal the ways in which the
co-constitutive categories of “Whiteness” and “Indigeneity'' may lose their meaning outside of
the specific historico-political context that is their dialogue. In parsing this dialogue, we will
strive to grasp the genealogy of the American project and the machinations of the identificatory
systems that maintain its vitality.

Throughout this course, dialogue will be more than an exchange we track through our readings.
Dialogue will also be our primary framework as we grow together as writers. As a reading and
composition course, the primary goal at hand is the gaining and/or strengthening of the necessary
skills for successfully writing essays in undergraduate, university courses. While facing the blank
page or screen can be daunting in that it seems to ask us to build greatness (or at least good grade
material) out of nothingness, I suggest that by focusing on dialogue we might ease our
apprehensions, and the concept of dialogue could shift our understanding of writing from one of
isolated production to one of engaged response. We need not create something out of nothing
when we write; we only need to begin talking back to the readings that we have critically
engaged.

This class meets twice a week. The first sessions of each week will focus on reading content, as
we must understand what it is that we are going to be writing about. The readings will consist of
both academic texts from fields such as performance studies, Indigenous critical theory, and
American studies and cultural texts such as novels and films. In small groups and as a full class,
students will participate in collaborative activities such as identifying theses, mapping rhetorical
moves, and expressing their affective and intellectual responses.
As the first sessions of each week will provide a foundation in reading comprehension, the
second (and arguably more important) sessions of each week will focus on the writing tools that
we might implement for strategically entering into a dialogue with the readings. This
writing-as-dialogue will build off of the first-session activities and aim to explore the ways in
which the primary and secondary texts under discussion are conversant. Specifically, we will
document, discuss, and adjust our reading and note-taking strategies, trace the arc of our
responses to the readings, practice evaluating each other’s written work, and begin to build
personal and communal archives of our questions for and retorts to the readings in the form of
short journaling exercises. These mini-assignments will incrementally and progressively guide us
through the process of writing a 10-12 page by compelling us to report on and organize our
dialogue with the texts and each other.

Together, we are each inheritors of the forms of the written essay and the violent histories that
have shaped this continent. Through the dialogic practice of writing, through entering the fraught
dialogues that constitute “Indigeneity and Whiteness,” we may be able not only to master the
college paper but also (even if only on the smallest level) understand and in turn help to reshape
the cultural objects that have shaped us. Dialogue is not only the space in which various parties
meet and vie for power; it is also the space in which culture shifts.
 Writing Assignment: Ekphrasis Exercise

Note to myself: This assignment will come within the first four weeks of the class, and it will be
preceded by an in-class activity addressing the standardized difference between primary and
secondary texts.

Poetry Foundation on "Ekphrasis": “Description” in Greek. An ekphrastic

poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art.
Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a
painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning.”

Various Indigenous and anticolonial texts (both “primary” and “secondary”) have aided us in
understanding the ways in which art objects present theory and the ways in which theory is as
contextually bound and aesthetic as art objects. Accordingly, our interventions in the discourse of
Indigeneity and Whiteness will hinge upon our ability to critique theory as we might art objects
and to apply concepts from art objects as we might theory. In turn, this process requires us to be
able to (1) recognize any given text as an object that can be scrutinized and (2) develop our
own critical opinions on a given object—opinions that rely not solely on borrowing pre-formed
theories but rather on our own sensory experiences with the object. Through describing these
experiences, we will become more than reporters on the discourse and its unbalanced power
structures; rather, we will enter the fray, bringing with us our own histories, positionalities,
ethics, and political concerns.

Specifically, in analyzing a secondary text, instead of immediately turning to another theorist for
help, we might ask ourselves: Where was this essay published? What do the physical copies look
like or feel like in hand? What meanings do these physical copies seem to convey? Is the
language dense, and are the sentences long and meandering? Why? What does that do to the
reader? How does the flow of the text correspond to the argument being made? In the case of
looking for theory in an art object, we might ask ourselves: How does the form mirror (or not
mirror) the content? What kind of relation does this object establish with my body? How does
time move around this object, and what agency does the object have in that movement?

For the purposes of this assignment, do not worry about pairing texts, developing a thesis and
sustained argument, or bringing in outside experiences and research. Choose an object/text from
class (either “aesthetic” or “theoretical”) or any object/text of your choosing that stakes a claim
in the Indigeneity/Whiteness discourse and describe it exhaustively. Do not attempt to be
“objective.” Lean into your own idiosyncrasies, voice, and relation to the object/text. This
description (or ekphrastic writing) should consider duration, texture, volume, sentence-structure,
vocabulary, color, tone, etc. Once you feel you have fully described the object/text, briefly relate
what kind of criticism might be generated out of the process of description. For example, does a
given story’s structure proffer a circular understanding of time? Or, does an essay’s language
highlight the ways in which everyday movements constitute a form of poetry?

Finally, write with the understanding that this assignment has the potential to provide you with a
solid foundation of original ideas and stances for your final paper. Later, you will be comparing
objects/texts and conversing with other theorists. This particular exercise is meant to ground your
future argumentation and writing in your own experience.

Assignment Specs:
● 1 inch margins
● 12 point font
● double-spaced
● 2-4 pages
● Spelling and grammatical mistakes are to be corrected before submission.
● Use consistent Chicago Manual or MLA citations.
● Number pages (second page onward) with last name (top right corner).