ARTH 376 Topics in Indigenous Art: The Aesthetic of the Apocalypse: An Indigenous Perspective

• Instructor: Dr. Michelle McGeough

For much of contemporary society, the idea of the "apocalypse" is understood as a catastrophic end-of-the-world event that will occur at some point in the future. Abrahamic religious traditions inform our collective understanding of the apocalypse. However, Indigenous people have already experienced an apocalyptic event(s), the first that occurred as a result of the establishment of the settler nation-state. As Dakota scholar Kim Tallbear writes, "Indigenous peoples globally have inhabited this apocalyptic future for centuries." In this course, we will examine how Indigenous artists explore post-apocalyptic themes in their artistic production, bringing forward aesthetic traditions from the past into the contemporary.