History 372 - SEM:PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HIST

Topics course. The captivity of Europeans and European Americans -- especially women -- by Native Americans has been a persistent theme in mainstream literary and popular culture since early colonial times. This course examines several cases of such captivity in historical and cross-cultural context as well as some of the many more instances in which Native Americans and other non-Europeans were captives. Topics include captivity in pre-colonial indigenous societies, the purposes and meanings of captivity for captors and captives, the uses of captivity narratives as historical evidence, captivity and cultural and ethnic identity, captivity and gender, Native-American-African American relations and the colonial-era slave trade in Native Americans.

Topic: Cross-Cultural Captivity in North America, 1500-1860. Instructor Permission. Not open to first-years, sophomores