Literature Program and American and Indigenous Studies Program Present
Comets and Catastrophe: Native American Narratives of Colonization and Resistance in Unexpected Places
Friday, September 26, 2014
Olin Humanities, Room 205
Kelly Wisecup
This talk examines stories told by New England Natives about comets that appeared throughout the seventeenth century and that, according to Natives’ testimony, signaled the impending arrival of European colonists, the diseases they carried with them, and the resulting social, environmental, and spiritual changes. I depart from the scholarly commonplace that the epidemics that devastated New England and its Native communities between 1616-1619 were so destructive that no Native accounts of the epidemics survived. Instead, I bring together Native studies, the history of medicine, and early American literary history to shift our focus from the epidemics and their destruction to the stories that Natives employed to critique colonization and outline paths for survival. By drawing on colonial reports of conversations with Native military and spiritual leaders, indigenous origin stories, and nineteenth-century vocabularies of the Abenaki language, I show that Natives used these “comet narratives” as theoretical and practical resources for responding to physical, social and spiritual upheaval.For more information, call 845-758-6822 x6874, or e-mail [email protected].
Location: Olin Humanities, Room 205