Craig Womack

Last updated

Craig Womack is an author and professor of Native American literature. He self-identifies as being of Creek and Cherokee descent, but is not enrolled with any Native American tribe. [1] Womack wrote the book Red on Red: Native American Literary Separatism, a book of literary criticism which argues that the dominant approach to academic study of Native American literature is incorrect. Instead of using poststructural and postcolonial approaches that do not have their basis in Native culture or experience, Womack claims the work of the Native critic should be to develop tribal models of criticism. In 2002, Craig won Wordcraft Circle Writer of the Year Winner. [2] Along with Robert Allen Warrior, Jace Weaver and Greg Sarris, Womack asserted themselves as a nationalist (American Indian literary nationalism), [3] which is part of an activist movement. The movement significantly altered the critical methodologies used to approach Native American literature.

Contents

Womack has also produced a novel, Drowning in Fire, about the lives of young gay Native Americans.

Currently, Womack is employed as a professor at Emory University, specializing in Native American literature. [4]

Personal life

Womack said that both of his parents were "mixed-blood native people" of Muscogee and Cherokee descent. [5] He is not enrolled in any Muscogee or Cherokee tribe. Despite having no legal status as Native American, Womack has said he considers his physical appearance to "fit the phenotypical stereotypes of indigenous peoples". He has claimed that police and authorities have subjected him to racism because they can always tell he is "Indian" by his appearance. [1]

Bibliography

Books

Presentations

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Five Civilized Tribes</span> Native American grouping

The term Five Civilized Tribes was applied by the United States government in the early federal period of the history of the United States to the five major Native American nations in the Southeast: the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminoles. White Americans classified them as "civilized" because they had adopted attributes of the Anglo-American culture.

The Dawes Rolls were created by the United States Dawes Commission. The commission was authorized by United States Congress in 1893 to execute the General Allotment Act of 1887.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yuchi</span> Native American ethnic group

The Yuchi people are a Native American tribe based in Oklahoma. Their original homeland was in the southeast of the present United States.

Native American studies is an interdisciplinary academic field that examines the history, culture, politics, issues, spirituality, sociology and contemporary experience of Native peoples in North America, or, taking a hemispheric approach, the Americas. Increasingly, debate has focused on the differences rather than the similarities between other ethnic studies disciplines such as African American studies, Asian American studies, and Latino/a studies.

The Native American Renaissance is a term originally coined by critic Kenneth Lincoln in the 1983 book Native American Renaissance to categorise the significant increase in production of literary works by Native Americans in the United States in the late 1960s and onwards. A. Robert Lee and Alan Velie note that the book's title "quickly gained currency as a term to describe the efflorescence on literary works that followed the publication of N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn in 1968". Momaday's novel garnered critical acclaim, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bacone College</span> Private liberal arts college in Muskogee, Oklahoma, US

Bacone College, formerly Bacone Indian University, is a private college in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Founded in 1880 as the Indian University by missionary Almon C. Bacone, it was originally affiliated with the mission arm of what is now American Baptist Churches USA. Renamed as Bacone College in the early 20th century, it is the oldest continuously operated institution of higher education in Oklahoma. The liberal arts college has had strong historic ties to several tribal nations, including the Muscogee and Cherokee. The Bacone College Historic District has been on the National Register of Historic Places listings in Muskogee County, Oklahoma since 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrea Smith (academic)</span> American academic, womens rights and anti-violence activist

Andrea Lee Smith is an American academic, feminist, and activist. Smith's work has primarily focused on issues of violence against women of color and their communities, specifically Native American women. Formerly an assistant professor of American Culture and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she is also a co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, the Boarding School Healing Project, and the Chicago chapter of Women of All Red Nations.

Eddie Chuculate is an American fiction writer who is enrolled in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and of Cherokee descent. He earned a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in creative writing at Stanford University. His first book is Cheyenne Madonna. For his short story, Galveston Bay, 1826, Chuculate was awarded the O. Henry Award. In 2010 World Literature Today featured Chuculate as the journal's "Emerging Author."

The Native Writers' Circle of the Americas (NWCA) is an organization of writers who identify as being Native American, First Nations, or of Native American ancestry.

The Four Mothers Society or Four Mothers Nation is a religious, political, and traditionalist organization of Muscogee Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw and Chickasaw people, as well as the Natchez people enrolled in these tribes, in Oklahoma. It was formed in the 1890s as an opposition movement to the allotment policies of the Dawes Commission and various US Congressional acts of the period. The society is religious in nature. It opposed allotment because dividing tribal communal lands attacked the basis of their culture. In addition, some communal lands would be declared surplus and likely sold to non-Natives, causing the loss of their lands.

Native American literature is literature, both oral and written, produced by Native Americans in what is now the United States, from pre-Columbian times through to today. Famous authors include N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, Simon Ortiz, Louise Erdrich, Gerald Vizenor, Joy Harjo, Sherman Alexie, D'Arcy McNickle, James Welch, Charles Eastman, Mourning Dove, Zitkala-Sa, John Rollin Ridge, Lynn Riggs, Hanay Geiogamah, William Apess, Samson Occom, Gerald Vizenor, Stephen Graham Jones, et al. Importantly, it is not "a" literature, but a set of literatures, since every tribe has its own cultural traditions. Since the 1960s, it has also become a significant field of literary studies, with academic journals, departments, and conferences devoted to the subject.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louis Oliver (poet)</span> Native American poet

Louis Oliver, also known as Little Coon or Wotkoce Okisce, was a citizen of the Muscogee Nation and an American poet. His poetry combines themes of Muscogee oral history with an examination of intellectualism in the context of the Muscogee Nation.

Robert Warrior, is a scholar and Hall Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Kansas. With Paul Chaat Smith, he co-authored Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee. He is generally recognized, along with Craig Womack, as being one of the founders of American Indian literary nationalism. Warrior served as president of the American Studies Association from 2016 to 2017.

American Indian literary nationalism is the name of an intellectual and activist movement within Native American literary studies that began in the late 20th century in the United States. It asserts that Native American literatures should be discussed as cultural works from separate, distinct nations, rather than as from ethnic groups of the United States.

The Cream in the Well is a full-length tragedy play written by Lynn Riggs. Completed in 1940 and copyrighted the same year after opening in Washington D.C., it had a twenty-four week run on Broadway at The Booth Theatre. The plot takes place in 1906 in Indian Territory, leading up to the statehood of Oklahoma. Set during the Allotment period, the play follows the ratification of the Curtis Act. Backlash from newspaper critics influenced the play's initial reception: the portrayal of incestuous relationships was considered especially controversial. Later critics have praised The Cream in the Well for creating Cherokee characters and non-Native characters that demonstrate the “rhythm and poetic quality” of regional speech.

References

  1. 1 2 Bell, Avril (2014). Relating Indigenous and Settler Identities: Beyond Domination. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN   9781137313560.
  2. ↑ "Drowning in Fire". UAPress. 2017-07-12. Retrieved 2020-03-02.
  3. ↑ Womack, Craig S. (1999). Red on red : Native American literary separatism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN   0-8166-3022-4. OCLC   41977152.
  4. ↑ "Academic Departments & Programs". college.emory.edu. Emory College of Arts and Sciences. 2011. Archived from the original on April 23, 2011. Retrieved March 17, 2011.
  5. ↑ "Native Americans and jazz on literature professor's beat". Emory University . Retrieved 2023-08-02.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.