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DESCRIPTION:Beth Piatote will give a Brown Bag Lunch presentation on Tuesda
 y\, September 27\, at 12  pm. Her talk is entitled “Legal Landscapes and C
 ontracting Worlds in James Welch’s Fools Crow.” Published in 1986\, Welch’
 s historical novel is set in Montana in the late nineteenth century\, and 
 deals significantly with US military and settler encroachment on Pikuni (B
 lackfeet) lands and communities. In this talk\, Piatote will explore repre
 sentations of visual practices\, particularly dreaming\, in opening up alt
 ernative spaces where Pikuni individuals can traverse and negotiate variou
 s contractual agreements with spiritual and/or non-human powers. These con
 tracts impact the physical world by binding the parties to each carry out 
 acts in the material world. When the novel opens\, these two worlds are fl
 uid and co-extensive. As the plot moves forward\, however\, the Pikuni are
  increasingly devastated by disease brought through settlers\, warfare wit
 h the US military\, and internal dissention over which course of action to
  pursue. A new contract\, the treaty\, begins to shape and constrict Pikun
 i autonomy. Visions become murky\, and the Pikuni access to non-human cont
 ractual worlds diminishes. In a massacre scene\, the treaty fails to prote
 ct a Pikuni band from slaughter. Even as material and non-material worlds 
 contract\, it is through visions (including the animation of a pictographi
 c winter count\, refigured here to depict the future rather than the past)
  that Pikuni survivors find a way forward.Beth H. Piatote is Associate Pro
 fessor of Native American Studies and affiliated faculty in the Department
  of Linguistics and the American Studies program at the University of Cali
 fornia\, Berkeley. Her research interests include Native American/Aborigin
 al literature and federal Indian law in the United States and Canada\, Ame
 rican literature\, and Nez Perce language and literature. Her first book\,
  Domestic Subjects: Gender\, Citizenship\, and Law in Native American Lite
 rature (Yale UP\, 2013) received an MLA book prize\, and her scholarly ess
 ays and short fiction have appeared in journals such as American Quarterly
 \, American Literary History\, Kenyon Review\, and SAIL: Studies in Americ
 an Indian Literatures\, as well as various anthologies. She is co-editor\,
  with Chadwick Allen\, of The Society of American Indians and Its Legacies
 \, a joint special issue of American Indian Quarterly and SAIL (summer 201
 3). Piatote received her PhD in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanfor
 d University. Currently\, she is completing a volume of short fiction\, Be
 ading Lesson and Other Stories\, and is at work on a second scholarly mono
 graph\, A Sense of Autonomy: Native American Literature and the Legal Imag
 inary\, which is the focus of her work as a Visiting Fellow at Bard Gradua
 te Center. She is also working with the Department of Linguistics at UC Be
 rkeley to create an on-line dictionary and text corpus in Nez Perce\, and 
 is committed to indigenous language continuity and revitalization efforts.
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SUMMARY:Bard Graduate Center: Legal Landscapes and Contracting Worlds in Ja
 mes Welch’s *Fools Crow*
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