H-150. A History of the Indigenous Book in the Americas - Advance Reading List

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  • Note: Given the expansive and interdisciplinary nature of this course, we assume participants will arrive with a wide variety of knowledge, training, and experience. The list of optional readings includes many that will inform discussion during the course, but participants are by no means expected to read every single thing on the list; rather, we encourage participants to use the optional readings to explore outside of their disciplinary, geographical, or cultural backgrounds, as well as to provide context for specific items that will be examined in the course.  

     Most sources are readily available via online databases, libraries, or booksellers. Participants will receive instructions on how to access the few sources that are harder to find, but should also feel free to contact the instructors if they have difficulty accessing any source on the list. 

  • Required:

    Erdrich, Louise. Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2003.

    • Harper Perennial edition of 2014 is also fine.

    Round, Phillip H. Removable Type: Histories of the Book in Indian Country, 1663-1880. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.

    Younging, Gregory. Elements of Indigenous Style. Edmonton: Brush Education, 2018.

    Cohen, Matt. “A History of Books in Native North America.” In The World of Indigenous North America, edited by Robert Warrior, 308-329. New York: Routledge, 2015.

    Warrior, Robert. “Indigenous Publishing, Scholarly Editing, and the Digital Future.” In Futures of Digital Scholarly Editing, edited by Matt Cohen, Kenneth M. Price, and Caterina Bernardini. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2025.

    Gore, Amy. “Conclusion: Paratextual Futures.” In Book Anatomy: Body Politics and the Materiality of Indigenous Book History, 125-134. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2023.

  • Optional:

    Indigenous Studies Contextual Readings 

     Cohen, Matt et al. “Indigenous Editing” [special section]. Textual Cultures 6, no. 2 (Autumn 2011): 109-146. 

    DeJong, David H. “Introduction: The Administration of Indian Affairs.” In Paternalism to Partnership: The Administration of Indian Affairs, 1786-2021, 1-21. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2022. 

    Mt. Pleasant, Alyssa et al. “Materials and Methods in Native American and Indigenous Studies: Completing the Turn.” Early American Literature 53, no. 2 (2018), 407-444. https://www.jstor.org/stable/90022198 

    O’Brien, Jean M. “Introduction.” In Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians Out of Existence in New England, xi-xxvi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.  

    Silva, Noenoe K. “Introduction.” In The Power of the Steel-Tipped Pen: Reconstructing Native Hawaiian Intellectual History, 1-18. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. 

    Wisecup, Kelly. “Introduction.” In Assembled for Use: Indigenous Compilation and the Archives of Early Native American Literatures, 1-22. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021. 

     

    General Book History Readings 

    Casper, Scott E., and Joan Shelley Rubin. “America.” In The Book: A Global History, ed. Michael F. Suarez and H. R. Woudhuysen, 682-709. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. 

    Dibbell, Jeremy B. “The Caribbean and Bermuda.” In The Book: A Global History, ed. Michael F. Suarez and H. R. Woudhuysen, 710-716. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. 

    Fleming, Patricia Lockhart. “Canada.” In The Book: A Global History, ed. Michael F. Suarez and H. R. Woudhuysen, 671-681. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. 

    Kallendorf, Craig. “The Ancient Book: Mesoamerica.” In The Book: A Global History, ed. Michael F. Suarez and H. R. Woudhuysen, 51-52. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. 

    Ucerler, M. Antoni J. “Missionary Printing.” In The Book: A Global History, ed. Michael F. Suarez and H. R. Woudhuysen, 107-115. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. 

    Vera, Eugenia Roldan. “Latin America (Including Incas and Aztecs.)” In The Book: A Global History, ed. Michael F. Suarez and H. R. Woudhuysen, 656-670. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. 

     

    Readings for Particular Topics, Items, Formats, Genres, and Creators 

     

    Monday:  

    Ayer, Edward E. “How I Bought My First Book.” Newberry Library Bulletin Second Series 5 (Dec 1950), 143-145. 

    Bell, Morgan F. “Some Thoughts on ‘Taking’ Pictures: Imaging ‘Indians’ and the Counter-Narratives of Visual Sovereignty.” Great Plains Quarterly 31 no. 2 (Spring 2011), 85-104.

    Bruchac, Margaret M. “Broken Chains of Custody: Possessing, Dispossessing, and Repossessing Lost Wampum Belts.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 162 no. 1 (March 2018), 56-105.

    Callison, Camille, and Candida Rifkind. “Introduction: Indigenous Comics and Graphic Novels: An Annotated Bibliography.” Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures 11 no. 1 (Summer 2019), 139-155.

    Doyle, Ann M. et al. “Indigenization of Knowledge Organization at the Xwi7xwa Library.” International Journal of Library and Information Studies 13 no. 2 (December 2015), 107-134.

    Kastner, Carolyn. “Collecting Mr. Ayer’s Narrative.” In Acts of Possession: Collecting in America, edited by Leah Dilworth, 138-62. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003. 

    Loyer, Jessie. “Collections Are Our Relatives: Disrupting the Singular, White Man’s Joy that Shaped Collections.” In The Collector and the Collected: Decolonizing Area Studies Librarianship, edited by Megan Browndorf, Erin Pappas, and Anna Arays, 27-43. Sacramento, CA: Library Juice Press, 2021. Newberry Library. “Access to Culturally Sensitive Indigenous Materials in the Newberry Library Collections.” 2021. 

    Newberry Library. “Collection Development Policy, American Indian and Indigenous Studies.” 2020.  

    Newberry Library. “A Guide to American Indian and Indigenous Studies Collections.” Accessed February 9, 2024.  

    Quiroa, Néstor. “Contextualizing the Popol Wuj from Friar Ximénez to the Digital Age.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History, November 20, 2018.

     

    Tuesday:  

    Arnold, Philip P. “Paper Ties to Land: Indigenous and Colonial Material Orientations to the Valley of Mexico.” History of Religions 35 no. 1 (August 1995), 27-60.

    Cushman, Ellen. “The Cherokee Syllabary from Script to Print.” Ethnohistory 57 no. 4 (Fall 2010), 625-649. 

    Glass, John B. “A Survey of Native Middle American Pictorial Manuscripts.” In Handbook of Middle American Indians 14, edited by Howard F. Cline, 3-80. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975. 

    Low, Denise. “Composite Indigenous Genres: Cheyenne Ledger Art as Literature.” Studies in American Indian Literatures 18 no. 2 (Summer 2006), 83-104.

    Morseau, Blaire. “Summary for The Red Man’s Rebuke.” In As Sacred to Us: Simon Pokagon’s Birch Bark Stories in Their Contexts, edited by Blaire Morseau, 61-63. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2023.  

    Pokagon, Simon. “The Red Man’s Rebuke.” In As Sacred to Us: Simon Pokagon’s Birch Bark Stories in Their Contexts, edited by Blaire Morseau, 65-76. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2023. 

    Wisecup, Kelly. “Printing and Circulating Simon Pokagon’s The Red Man’s Rebuke and The Red Man’s Greeting.” In As Sacred to Us: Simon Pokagon’s Birch Bark Stories in Their Contexts, edited by Blaire Morseau, 77-118. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2023. 

    Wood, Stephanie. “The Techialoyan Codices.” 2008?

     

    Wednesday:  

    Gibson, Charles. “Published Collections of Documents Relating to Middle American Ethnohistory.” In Handbook of Middle American Indians 13, edited by Howard F. Cline, 3-41. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975. 

    Salomon, Frank. “Testimonies: The Making and Reading of Native South American Historical Sources.” In The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas 3.2, edited by Frank Salomon and Stuart B. Schwartz, 19-95. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 

    Schroeder, Susan. “The history of Chimalpahin’s ‘Conquista’ manuscript.” Chimalpahin’s Conquest: A Nahua Historian’s Rewriting of Francisco López de Gómara’s La Conquista de México. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010.  

    Tavárez, David E. “Reclaiming the Conquest: An Assessment of Chimalpahin’s Modifications to La Conquista de México.” Chimalpahin’s Conquest: A Nahua Historian’s Rewriting of Francisco López de Gómara’s La Conquista de México. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010. 

    Zuck, Rochelle Raineri. “’Yours in the Cause’: Readers, Correspondents, and the Editorial Politics of Carlos Montezuma’s ‘Wassaja’.” American Periodicals 22 no. 1 (2012), 72-93. 

     

    Thursday: 

    Emery, Jacqueline. “Introduction.” In Recovering Native American Writings in the Boarding School Press. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017.   

    Hutchinson, Elizabeth. “Angel DeCora’s Cultural Politics.” In The Indian Craze: Primitivism, Modernism, and Transculturation in American Art, 1890-1915, 171-220. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009. 

    Isen, Tajja. “The Hidden Racism of Book Cover Design.” The Walrus, August 14, 2024.

    Pollack, John H. “Chihoatenwa’s Prayer: A Wendat-Jesuit Print Encounter from Seventeenth-Century New France.” In American Contact: Objects of Intercultural Encounters and the Boundaries of Book History, edited by Rhae Lynn Barnes and Glenda Goodman, 90-99. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024. 

    Warrior, Robert. “Democratic Vistas of the Osage Constitutional Crisis.” In The People and the Word: Reading Native Nonfiction, 49-94. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. 

     

    Friday: 

    Kim, Seonghoon. “’We Have Always Had These Many Voices’: Red Power Newspapers and a Community of Poetic Resistance.” American Indian Quarterly 39 no. 3 (Summer 2015), 271-301.

    Schmitz, Margaret J. “Indigenous Temporal Enmeshment in Akwesasne Notes.” Panorama 8 no. 2 (Fall 2022). https://journalpanorama.org/article/akwesasne-notes/