Fall 2025 Course List

• Instructor: Dr. Malinda Lowery
• Meeting Days/Time: M & W 11:30am - 12:15pm
• Location: Callaway S104

Curious about how history, law, and culture all come together? In this course you'll explore the roots of today’s jurisdictional conflicts between tribal, state, and federal governments. We will investigate how different governments—the Muscogee Creek Nation, the state of Oklahoma, and the United States—interact and overlap, and how that affects people’s everyday lives, especially in Tribal communities.

This isn’t a typical class. You’ll be part of a partnership between Emory University and the College of the Muscogee Nation (CMN), learning alongside students from both schools in a shared hybrid classroom. You’ll also have the chance to take part in in-person experiences that connect you to Muscogee homelands and history and to hear from experts in Indigenous studies and tribal law.

By the end of the semester, you’ll have worked on a collaborative project that links legal and historical issues to your own community and to Muscogee lands. Whether you're interested in law, Indigenous studies, history, or social justice—this course will be relevant and impactful. 

• Instructor: Dr. Emil’ Keme
• Meeting Days/Time: M & W 1:00pm – 2:15pm
• Location: Callaway S109

Indigenous Peoples are some of the most effective guardians in protecting Earth’s remaining biodiversity. What can their wisdom teach us about the contemporary challenges we face with climate change? Through a critical examination of the literature written and produced by various Indigenous authors across Abiayala (The Americas), this course will critically engage with contemporary Indigenous writings on the environment. Our critical readings and discussions will allow us to reflect on the historical relationships between Indigenous peoples to their homelands, waters, plants, forests, and animals, and how such relationships manifest within settler colonial contexts.   

Required Texts

• Braiding Sweetgrass. Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Potawatomi) 
• The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson (Mdewakanton, Rosebud Reservation) 
• The Maybe-Bird by Jennifer Foerster (Muscogee/Creek) 
• Ancestral Future by Ailton Krenak (Krenak Tribe)

• Instructor: Dr. Heidi Senungetuk
• Meeting Days/Times: M & W 2:30pm-3:45pm
• Location: Burlington Road Building 307

• Instructor: Dr. Mandy Sur Sytsma
• Meeting Days/Times: T & Th 2:30pm-3:45pm
• Location: Callaway S109

In this course, we will read and study a range of Indigenous-authored youth literature, from picture books to YA novels. We will ground our study of these texts in principles of relational accountability in several ways. We will partner with students and faculty at the College of the Muscogee Nation participating in this course with us. We will take a required field trip to the Indigenous Celebration at the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historic Park in Macon, GA. We will engage with the Muscogee art exbibit at the Carlos Museum. We will host class visits with Indigenous authors, scholars, and educators. We will practice regular self-reflection, examining how our personal experiences, communities, and places inform our learning. We will also consider the literary texts we study in relationship to pressing political, social, and cultural concerns of Indigenous peoples. Finally, through the course projects we develop, we will not only deepen our own knowledge of Indigenous youth literature, but we will also share that knowledge beyond our class, contributing to more accurate, respectful, and enjoyable learning about Indigenous nations in our local communities.

• Instructor: Dr. Megan Mucioki 
• Meeting Time: M & W 11:30am-12:45pm
• Location: Math & Science Center W501

This course aims to understand and explore forests as landscapes of Indigenous presence in Atlanta and the broader southeast region through systems of Indigenous foods and forest stewardship. We will: Develop knowledge about foods that come from forests, particularly in the Southeast, and practices of forest stewardship that promote social-cultural-ecological benefits; Learn and explore Indigenous histories and presents in and around Atlanta and the Southeast; Uncover stories of forests and explore different ways to know their story; Acquire skills in research, independent and peer-to-peer inquiry, relationship building, and grappling with topics that do not have clear, straight forward answers; and Build community within and outside of Emory We will cover topics related to ethnobotany and forest foods, wild concepts and myths, food sovereignty, colonization and forests, Indigenous forest stewardship, environmental change, co-management, and more. This class is a land-based course, meaning a portion of our learning will be done in forests and with people in and around Atlanta and the broader region. We will substitute one or two weeks with weekend field trips- one overnight and one day trip. We will engage in reciprocity with forests and the people we engage with in this course and consider what that means to us as a classroom community. This is a project-based course with students focused on the development of a larger body of work throughout the semester related to course objectives. This course is linked with Dr. Malinda Lowery’s course on Indigenous Sovereignties in the Department of History. Students will have opportunity throughout the semester to co-engage with her course and some topics will overlap between the two courses. There are no pre-requisites, but students are best prepared by taking courses in Indigenous studies, ENV285 Biocultural Environments, botany, or ecology. Students are encouraged to also prepare by reading up on foundational concepts in Indigenous Environmental Sciences. Dr. Mucioki is happy to suggest readings.

• Instructor: Dr. Vani Kannan
• Meeting Times: T & Th 10:00am-11:15am
• Location: Callaway S102

This course offers an introduction to various nonfiction genres (including flash nonfiction, photo-essay, and personal essay) and approaches to writing that destabilize standard academic English (including Indigenous language reclamation, multilingualism, and translingualism). We will read and discuss a range of scholarship in Black, Indigenous, Asian/American, and Latinx/Latine rhetoric, writing, and literacy; ground ourselves in our shared contexts of Atlanta and the larger Southeast; and develop shared practices of land- and place-based writing. Students will have the opportunity to attend a field trip to the Ocmulgee Indigenous Celebration and engage with various guest speakers.

This is an English Language Learner (ELL) course. Contact Jane O'Connor (jcoconn@emory.edu) for permission to enroll.

• Instructor: Dr. Christine Ristaino
• Meeting Days/Times: T & Th 10:00am-11:15am
• Location: Callaway C202

What does it mean to be from one place and live in another, or to leave and return, or to never be allowed to return? What constitutes home when you are away from it? In this class we will look at the concept of diaspora (people who have spread out or been dispersed from their homelands), starting with the diaspora present in Italy and the Italians and Italian Americans living in the United States. We will investigate our own voyages away from home and those of our families, and research our family histories. We will learn about the ARRIVALS project (https://www.idahomid.org/arrivals) and participate in a photo-based participatory mapping workshop on diaspora, where we will contribute our own experiences and stories of arrivals, serving as a snapshot of our community. We will also partner with the Idaho Museum of International Diaspora.

Our course will begin by talking about diaspora in Italy. Next, we will explore Italian American communities. We will look at the diaspora located in Atlanta (in particular, the Muscogee Creek Nation’s history with forced displacement), Clarkston (a refugee resettlement city and “the most diverse square mile in America”), and Emory University (students from 66 nations are currently represented in our student body). Finally, we will explore our own family stories of diaspora. This course will not only help us learn about Italy, diaspora, and the world, it will also promote investigation into who we and our families are in relation to the broader diaspora and communities we study.