AMERICAN INDIAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY AS TRIBAL AND PERSONAL HISTORY: WHO GETS TO TELL THE STORY

Director: Kathryn Shanley, University of Montana

This four-week institute at Newberry Library will focus on the varieties of American Indian autobiography, modes of production, place-centered and gendered perspectives on the indigenous self, native language use, and other issues related to the telling of an indigenous person's life story relative to the individual's community. Kathryn Shanley (Assiniboine/Nakota), the director, serves as Chair of the Department of Native American Studies at the University of Montana. She formerly led a National Endowment for the Humanities workshop on Native American autobiography at the Newberry Library and served on advisory board of the D'Arcy McNickle Center. Widely published in American Indian literary studies, Shanley has completed a critical study of the work of James Welch (Blackfeet/Gros Ventre), and recently edited a special issue of Paradoxa Journal entitled "Native American Literature: Boundaries and Sovereignties." Guest lecturers will include A. LaVonne Ruoff, Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois-Chicago; Michael Wilson, Associate Professor, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; and others.

The institute is designed for teachers from American Indian tribal colleges and Native American studies programs in colleges and universities. Institute participants will meet for several hours a day, four days a week, to discuss a common set of readings that reveals the diverse experiences and perspectives of Native peoples. They will devote the balance of their time to work on independent research projects, which can be primary research, curriculum development, and/or bibliography. Participants will present their individual projects with the group at the end of the summer institute.

Fifteen participants chosen will receive $2,000 each for housing and per diem, up to $1,000 each for travel to and from Newberry Library, and a book and photocopying allowance. Institute sponsors are the Newberry Library, Lannan Foundation, and the McNickle Center Visiting Committee.

Founded in 1887, the Newberry Library is an independent research library, free and open to the public. Its holdings center on the societies of Western Europe and the Americas from the late Middle Ages to the early twentieth century, and include two unequalled collections of print and non-print materials on American Indian peoples. The Edward E. Ayer Collection of general Americana has more than 130,000 volumes, plus an extensive collection of manuscripts, maps, atlases, photographs, drawings, and paintings. The Everett D. Graff Collection of Western Americana focuses on the trans-Mississippi West in the nineteenth century.

Applications may be requested by mail (see address above), email at mcnickle@newberry.org or downloaded from our web page at www.newberry.org

APPLICATION DEADLINE: FEBRUARY 15, 2002.