Courses

This class in an introduction to the ancestral and current knowledge that different indigenous groups and thinkers in the Americas have compiled and produced in the last decades. We will study different conceptions of time, history, nature, human and non-human beings, plus non-western understandings of contemporary problems like climate change, racism, and political violence. The way in which these ideas are presented is mainly by storytelling, testimony, orality, and in an experiential way, allowing us to engage with them and make a reflection about how knowledge is articulated in traditional disciplines in comparison with other traditions. We will also study, however, how some Native thinkers engage with traditional academic writing to communicate ideas about their own cosmologies and understandings of reality. All this will create an opportunity to talk, experiment with, and enact different perspectives of sharing information and reflect on the importance of different systems of thought today. The classroom, but also the museum, the cinema, and the green areas of IU, will be our spaces of encounter and reflection!

This course is eligible for honors credit through Hutton Honors College. 

Catalog Information: COLL-S 103  FRESHMAN SEMINAR IN A&H

Instructor:

Carlos Colmenares Gil

Email:

ccolmena@iu.edu

Department:

Comparative Literature

I grew up in Venezuela and have lived in different big cities throughout my life. Now In Bloomington, I teach in the department of Comparative Literature. I am interested in the ideas of groups that have been historically marginalized, and how they have been excluded from disciplines of thought and from the arts, or how they have been included in them in simplistic ways. More concretely, I research on contemporary Latin American music, film, literature, and philosophy, and currently I am writing on a group of Venezuelan poets (Igor Barreto, Yolanda Pantin, and Miguel James) and how their work intersects with issues of class and race. 

GenEd Information: Approved for the Arts & Humanities requirement of the IU Bloomington General Education program.