LIT-155 Rewriting Pocahontas, Rethinking American Literature

Who was Pocahontas, and why are Americans still so obsessed with her? Where does Pocahontas the historical person end, and Pocahontas-the-myth begin? And how have Indigenous writers and scholars rewritten and rethought the Pocahontas narrative? In this course we will trace the historical development of “Pocahontas” across genres and media. Texts will include histories (John Smith’s Generall Historie), dramas (The Indian Princess, the first American play about American Indians), poems (Lydia Sigourney’s epic poem Pocahontas) and films (Disney’s Pocahontas and Malik’s The New World). We will read these settler-authored texts in conversation with Indigenous-authored accounts of the historical Pocahontas (Powhatan name Matoaka) and the Indian princess trope.

Maximum Enrollment

First Year Course (18)

(First Year Course, Writing Intensive, Social Structural and Institutional Hierarchies.)

Credits

1

Notes

(History or Intermedia) (SSIH)