Arnold Krupat

Why Global Studies?

Although much of what I teach easily fits into an English department or American Literature department, my particular conception of Native American literatures has led me to join the Global Studies Faculty Group.

This is because in the past twenty years or so awareness of issues of indigenousness, or the history and present condition of the first peoples to settle a particular geographical space presently dominated by later arrivals, has developed internationally or globally. Although my work focuses specifically on Native Americans of the present day United States-peoples who populated the Americas at least 15,000 years ago-these issues have begun to seem relevant to scholars in, for example, Scandinavia, where the Sami people (they used to be called Lapps) are the predecessors of contemporary Norwegians, Finns, and Danes, in Brazil, and, indeed, in Taiwan where some few indigenous groups have recently asserted themselves. I have been invited to speak in England, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Brazil, Norway, Cyprus, and Sweden.