Native American Colonial Mediascapes: Mapmaking and Periodicals

Prof. Dr. Oliver Scheiding (University of Mainz)

In the last decade, there has been much discussion of printing and books in Native American literary criticism and how key concepts, such as sovereignty and territoriality, are negotiated in print. While earlier debates about American Indian literary nationalism focused on intellectual sovereignty and the need for self-determined cultural, artistic, and political expressions, current studies reassess notions of self-representation and the place of American Indian cultural production. Analyzing the range of textual and non-textual modes of communication among Native Americans in their struggles over intellectual and rhetorical sovereignty in the Americas, new literary histories have appeared that challenge ideas of a specific logic of print, frequently associated with concepts of western modernization, Christianity, and progress. Current studies shed light on multi-agential, proliferating, and recursive assemblages of cultural expressions exploring Native American literature and epistemologies in a global perspective. In this way, indigenous literature encompasses media circuits and circulatory paths of oral, written, material, and semiotic practices that shape communication networks across national boundaries and geographies, both tribal and Euro-American. Discussing media agency and publications forms (i.e. Native American maps and periodicals) the talk portrays Native Americans as full-fledged historical actors who played a formative role in the making of early America.

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