It looks at the important role kinship helped to define a women's standing in her community. It documents the manners in which women supported and changed the destinies of their nations in diplomacy and war. And it covers women's efforts to preserve the cultural integrity of their languages, artistic traditions, and spiritual beliefs. The course is designed to connect the past with the present and to understand how women used their cultural knowledges as sources of resistence, innovation, and accomodation under a history of colonization. In areas where controversy exists, attention is always given to understanding the contested grounds on which interpretations differ and collide.
Students work through the material in a laboratory setting during the semester.
The course grade is based on this work and a paper written on some part of the material. A key matter is the intricate set of arguments by which Halbwachs established his social, anti - individualist theory. In opposition to Halbwachs, narrative and performance accounts of memory will be examined.