Please join the History Department at Brown University on Saturday, September 23, for a comparative lecture forum featuring the latest scholarship on indigenous history. Specialists on a variety of different regions will speak on the methodological and historiographical challenges of integrating indigenous peoples into traditional, nation state-based narratives of the past, with a particular focus on three instances of state building: the American Revolution, the Meiji Restoration, and Latin America's War of Independence. (A more detailed description of the lecture series follows this message.)

SPEAKERS:

Colin Calloway, Professor of Native American Studies and History, Dartmouth College, "Looking beyond the Delaware: Native Americans in the Era of Nation Building"

David Howell, Associate Professor of East Asian Studies and History, Princeton University, "Ethnicity and Modernity in Japan"

Charles Walker, Associate Professor of History, University of California, Davis, "The Republic of Indians in the Republic of Peru: Historical and Historiographical Challenges of Incorporating Indians into National Narratives"

TIME AND PLACE:

Saturday, September 23, 2000

10 AM - 3:30 PM (Lunch break: 12-1:30)

Reception to follow

Smith-Buonnano Hall, Room 106
(Pembroke Campus)

ETHNOHISTORIES AND MASTER NARRATIVES:
PLACING INDIGENOUS PEOPLES WITHIN HISTORY

Among the most salient features of recent historical scholarship has been an efflorescence of work exploring the past experiences of indigenous peoples. Yet, while historians now know far more about environmental practices, gender relations, diplomacy, and cultural change among indigenous peoples than ever before, it remains less clear how these new histories (or "ethnohistories" to borrow a term from American Indian scholarship) have affected the general practice of history.

As part of its new Replogle Lecture Series, the Brown University History Department proposes to invite to campus several leading scholars who can address the unresolved issue at the heart of indigenous history: how such work can or should be incorporated into more traditional, nation-state focused narratives about the past. The ensuing presentations will be comparative and wide-ranging in focus, for the Lecture Committee has defined indigenous peoples broadly as to include not only the native peoples of what is now the United States ("American Indians") but also the indigenous inhabitants of Latin America and portions of Asia as well, and specialists from all these regions will participate in a joint forum at Brown.