Fall 2026 Course List

• Instructor: Dr. Heidi Senungetuk
• Meeting Days/Time: M & W 2:30pm - 3:45pm

This course is an introduction to a diverse selection of Indigenous musics of North America, with a central focus on the ideas Race and Ethnicity and music. Particular attention will be paid to ways in which music articulates and shapes issues of tradition and modernity, place and identity, revitalization and resurgence, and sovereignty and self-determination. Ethnomusicological and interdisciplinary methods will be used to examine historical and social dynamics behind Indigenous musical and cultural arts in the 21st century.

• Instructor: Dr. Megan Mucioki
• Meeting Days/Time: T & Th 2:30pm-3:45pm

In this course we consider how environments are shaped by social and cultural practices for the integrated health and wellbeing of both human and ecological communities. We consider topics like place-based knowledge systems, management, stewardship, and conservation practices, food sovereignty, relational health, climate change, and co-management or Indigenous led policy. Biocultural landscapes are closely tied to and stewarded by Indigenous Peoples. In this course we present perspectives of Indigenous Peoples and ontologies grounded in Indigenous studies and pedagogies to understand how biocultural environments are Indigenous environments with place-based peoples and practices that have shaped these lands for generations. In this vein we will explore several regional case studies. Students will be introduced to concepts of Indigenous knowledge systems, sovereignty, stewardship practices, and colonization. In entirety the course encourages students to explore how their view and perspective of environments and land shift when they are viewed as biocultural spaces and how interdisciplinary and cross-ontological work can support Indigenous stewardship and revitalization of these spaces.

• Instructor: Dr. Megan Mucioki
• Meeting Days/Times: T 8:30am-11:15am

• Instructor: Dr. Vani Kannan
• Meeting Days/Times: M & W 10am-11:15am

Cultural Rhetorics is a growing subfield of Rhetoric, Writing, and Literacy studies that poses a critical challenge to the discipline’s foundations in Greek and Roman oratorical traditions. In this course, we will engage with scholarly/creative traditions and genres/modes of scholarship that have sought to decolonize and localize the field. We will engage with guest speakers; take a day trip to the Ocmulgee Indigenous Celebration; attend the Emory Mvskoke Teach-In, and engage with “rhetorics” as shared practices that exist in deep relationality with embodiment, land, culture, and community.

Students will be encouraged to pursue independent research inquiries in Indigenous | Black |  Asian/American | Latinx/Latine | Queer | Disability Rhetorics (while these are often consolidated as separate subfields, they are mutually-related).

• Instructor: Dr. Mandy Suhr-Sytsma & Dr. Colton Wood 
• Meeting Days/Times: T & Th 2:30pm-3:45pm 

This course will be co-taught by Emory Professor Mandy Suhr-Sytsma and College of Muscogee Nation (CMN) Professor Colton Wood. We will meet in person at Emory and video conference with Dr. Wood and his CMN students. As we read Angeline Boulley’s YA novel Warrior Girl Unearthed and a range of shorter works, we will ground our study in principles of relational accountability. We will do all our learning in deep, respectful collaboration with our CMN partners. We will attend the annual Indigenous Celebration at the Ocmulgee Mounds (required field trip) and the annual Muscogee Teach-In at Emory. We will practice regular self-reflection, examining how our personal experiences, communities, and places inform our learning. We will consider the literature we study in relation to pressing political, social, and cultural concerns of Indigenous peoples. Finally, through two creative, collaborative course projects, we will not only deepen our own knowledge of Indigenous literatures, but we will also share that knowledge with others, contributing to more accurate, respectful, and enjoyable learning about Indigenous nations.  

• Instructor: Dr. Malinda Maynor Lowery (Emory University) & Matthew Yates (College of the Muscogee Nation)
• Meeting Days/Times: M and W 5:30pm – 6:45pm

This course explores overlapping cultural environments and multiple legal sovereigns within the historical and present-day territorial jurisdictions of the Muscogee Creek Nation, the state of Oklahoma, and the United States. Through legal concepts and policies, these multiple sovereigns have personal impacts on individual North American Indigenous and/or national citizens. As part of the partnership between CMN and Emory to co-develop Native American and Indigenous Studies, these classes are held concurrently in a hybrid format, and will occasionally meet fully online via zoom. The courses have the same curriculum and schedule, with additional in-person enrichment opportunities for students. Emory and CMN students will partner to create semester/trimester-long projects linking historical and legal issues to Muscogee homelands, Muscogee reservation lands, and each student's home communities. 

• Instructor: Dr. Malinda Maynor Lowery (Emory University) & Matthew Yates (College of the Muscogee Nation)
• Meeting Days/Times:M and W 11:30-12:45

This course examines the length and depth of Muscogee (Creek) relationships to place, governance, and society from deep time to the present, situating Muscogee history within the broader landscape of North American Indigenous nations while emphasizing the distinctiveness of Indigenous cultures, regions, and political traditions. Through immersive engagement with treaties, origin narratives, legal cases, speeches, oral histories, and material culture, students analyze how histories are constructed, where silences emerge, and why certain stories remain marginalized. The course moves beyond a narrative of loss to focus on what we know: enduring systems of kinship, land-based epistemologies, sovereignty, adaptation, and cultural continuity. Students critically examine complex historical moments, including removal, internal political divisions, enslavement, Civil War allegiances, allotment, and contemporary jurisdictional debates, while practicing nuanced, evidence-based interpretation. Drawing on Indigenous thinkers such as Vine Deloria Jr. and Daniel Wildcat, the course fosters a rigorous understanding of Indigenous perspectives and cultivates a sustained, place-based intellectual engagement with Indigenous pasts, presents, and futures.

• Instructor: Dr. Mandy Suhr-Sytsma 
• Meeting Days/Times: T & Th 10am-11:15am, T & Th 11:30am-12:45pm

In this interdisciplinary course, we’ll read the 2019 non-fiction book An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States for Young People and engage several short texts by Indigenous creators. In addition to readings, in-class activities, an outside-of-class enrichment experience, regular short writing assignments, and the final reflection essay required in all first-year writing classes, students will complete three major projects: a paper analyzing a recent Native news text, a multimodal presentation on a contemporary Indigenous leader, and a narrative nonfiction essay reflecting on personal experiences learning about Indigenous peoples. 

ITAL 190: Diaspora in Italy and Beyond

• Instructor: Dr. Christine Ristaino
• Meeting Days/Times: 

  T & Th 11:30-12:45pm, Callaway S101

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. 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.