HST6043 Burying the White Gods: Indigenous Peoples in the Early Modern Colonial World

15 credits, Semester one
Module leader 2024-25: Caroline Pennock

Module summary

Since the flowering of postcolonialism and the rise of movements for Indigenous rights, scholars have fought to reconstruct the complexity and significance of Indigenous peoples and to remove them from an imperial framework that casts them as passive victims of historical events. In the early American world, this greater sensitivity to Indigenous agendas and actions has led increasingly to meetings between Native peoples and Europeans being explained in terms of encounter, negotiation and accommodation, rather than simple conquest.

This module will consider the diverse historiographical, methodological and political issues which impact on Indigenous histories in colonial contexts, from postcolonialism to the New Philology and the New Indian History, the rise of activist histories, and the politicisation of the Indigenous past. We will centre Native perspectives and voices, and consider the challenges and opportunities of the complex alphabetic, material and oral records available for the study of Indigenous histories. Taking the invasion of Mexico as a case study - but also drawing on other imperial contexts - this module recognises Indigenous histories as the product of diverse, vibrant, often still-living cultures, and seeks to illuminate the places and perspectives of Native peoples in colonial history and historiography.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, you will be able to:

Demonstrate a broad understanding of the historiographical, methodological and theoretical issues associated with the study of Indigenous histories in colonial contexts
Demonstrate an awareness of the key transitions and developments in Indigenous history and historiography, particularly of the Americas
Demonstrate an ability to identify and engage with the political issues and contemporary controversies shaping the study of Indigenous histories
Demonstrate an understanding of the diverse roles of Indigenous peoples in the colonial world
Demonstrate a capacity for independent and critical historical thinking, expressed both orally and in writing

Assessment methods

Assessment type - % of final mark

3,000 word essay - 100%

You will complete a 3,000 word essay on a topic related to one of the module's key themes. You will define your own essay topic in discussion with your tutor.

Additional learning and teaching information

Teaching information and indicative seminar plan:

The module will be taught in five, two-hour classes. You will also have individual tutorial contact with the module tutor in order to discuss your assessment for this module.

Classes will cover themes such as postcolonialism and the New Indian History; Indigenous perspectives on the invasion of Mexico; sources and methods for the study of Indigenous histories; Indigenous peoples in the colonial world; and who owns Indigenous histories?.

Through structured reading, online engagement and discussion, students will engage with key texts from the burgeoning primary and secondary literature in this field, ranging from Indigenous theory to material culture and pictographic records. Through their own research and reading, students will be encouraged to relate the American case study to broader themes of colonial, Indigenous and subaltern histories.

Selected reading:

David Carballo, Collision of worlds: a deep history of the fall of Aztec Mexico and the forging of New Spain (Oxford, 2020)
Thomas King, An Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America (Minneapolis, 2012)
Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London, 1999)
Tanya Talaga, All Our Relations: Indigenous trauma in the shadow of colonialism (London, 2020)
Camilla Townsend, Malintzin’s Choices: an Indian woman in the conquest of Mexico (Albuquerque, 2006).
Stephanie Wood, Transcending conquest: Nahua views of Spanish colonial Mexico (Norman, 2003)

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