Jean Taylor Kroeber, widow of Karl Kroeber, has granted permission for "SAIL" to reprint his "Address to Columbia College Students Elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Society, 18 May 2009" and "An Interview with Karl Kroeber." Conducted by Michael Mallick, the interview was published in the newsletter of the Department of English and Comparative…

This article presents an interview with Karl Kroeber that was originally published in "English Department Updates" (Fall 2009), a semiannual alumni newsletter of the Columbia University Department of English & Comparative Literature. In this interview, Kroeber, who taught at Columbia for 57 years, discusses the range of courses he…

Many students the author has taught get frustrated when they read Leslie Silko's canonical Native American novel, "Ceremony". Not only do they struggle with Silko's disruptions of linear temporality and her collapsing of binary oppositions, but they also struggle with the novel's geographic and cultural location. To help students better…

In Native American literary studies today there is a gap between the variety of criticism being produced and the metacritical debate about what Native literary criticism should look like. A review of recent issues of "Studies in American Indian Literatures", for example, will discover a wide variety of approaches, some relating literary…

This article presents the author's response to Sam McKegney's "Strategies for Ethical Engagement: An Open Letter Concerning Non-Native Scholars of Native Literatures." In his response to Sam's diagnosis of the malaise currently afflicting non-Aboriginal critics of this literature, the author attempts to consider the "cure" Sam offers (albeit…

Teaching American Indian literature with online resources can help diverse urban Indian and multicultural students connect with American Indian cultures, histories, and Nations. This online-enriched pedagogy adopts Susan Lobo's sense of the city as an "urban hub," or activist community center, an urban area linked to reservations in which Native…

The author's two main arguments in her discussion include: teaching and researching Native literatures within the disciplinary context of Native Studies enhances the understanding of these texts; vice versa, Native writers address topics that are intrinsic components in epistemological processes of decolonization promoted in a Native Studies…

Twenty-first-century skeptics would say that there are really no such things as beauty and truth and certainly not goodness. A Pueblo poet seemed to think there was--"the corn people have a song / it is very good"--and unless people think they know better, they'd better listen up. This article begins with a short piece, set down by the…

To speak about separatism as a Canadian is to use a loaded term, one that invokes a significant yet historically specific sociocultural moment. Winners and losers emerged, and in the process, the word "separatism" received a bad rap. Consequently, as a white Canadian who still believes in at least the optimism of the multiculturalist…

Louise Erdrich's early poem "The Strange People" portrays a dynamic understanding of gender echoed in many of her later fictive works. Narrated by a speaker who is half antelope, half woman, the poem details the relationship between a masculine hunter and his feminine prey. The poem suggests that gender is experienced as a wound, a site of…

In this article, the author explains what he sees as the ironically disabling impact of some critical postures characterized by careful, self-reflexive distance undertaken by non-Native critics and then suggests a possible alternative direction for future critical interventions. The article presents the most popular strategies of ethical…

In the spring of 2008, university students enrolled in courses at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), and the University of Cyprus (UCY) participated in a cross-cultural e-learning project in which they studied American Indian literature and history. All students followed the same six-week syllabus, which included shared readings and…

Despite the fact that more than two-thirds of American Indians live in urban areas, many readers and scholars of American Indian literature continue to associate Indigenous peoples with natural environments rather than urban ones. Highlighting literary texts written by Native authors that reflect the multifaceted dimensions of urban Indian life is…

Leslie Marmon Silko began her most recent work, "Gardens in the Dunes" (1999), intending to write a novel that would not be political. Following the publication of "Almanac of the Dead" (1992), which was simultaneously hailed as one of the most important books of the twentieth century and condemned for its angry self-righteousness, Silko…

In this article, the author proposes a model educators can apply when teaching one text, Louise Erdrich's "The Bingo Palace"; while she emphasizes the particular concerns this text raises, she aims, simultaneously, to offer a more general approach to teaching American Indian literature responsibly. In an increasingly multicultural academic…