McMaster University | Indigenous Studies
| Research Areas: Indigenous Literatures; Indigenous Film |
Renae Watchman is an associate professor of Indigenous Studies. Watchman’s teaching and research interests are in Indigenous literary arts and Indigenous film studies. Her forthcoming monograph, Restoring Relations Through Stories: from Dinétah to Denendeh, formerly Tsé Bitʼaʼí (The Winged Rock): Visual & Literary Storytelling, in press with the University of Arizona Press, introduces, synthesizes, and analyzes traditional stories by Diné and Dene storytellers in orature and film. Restoring storied autonomy, identities, kinship, and languages is coming to a state of harmony, beauty, wellness, peace, and balance, or hózhǫ́ by recognizing hane’ (story/narrative) in oral, literary, and visual formats (spoken, published, directed, and beaded). The book conceptualizes narrative autonomy as hane’tonomy and visual storytelling from a Diné perspective and offers a map for restorying that resists inauthentic and misappropriated stories. Watchman’s argument privileges Indigenous narratives and how these narratives are tied to land and relations. In the book’s final movement, the author explores the power of story to forge ancestral and kinship ties between the Diné and Dene, across time and space through re-storying of relations. Watchman’s forthcoming publications include book chapters “Indigi-realism and ‘Aye!’sthetics,” and “Transatlantic Indigeneity: Fictionalized Indigenous Literary Presence.” The latter complements another facet of Watchman’s work: developing insights into transdisciplinary relationship building across Indigenous studies and German studies.
Selected Publications
Watchman, Renae. “Teaching Indigenous Film through an Indigenous Epistemic Lens.” Studies in American Indian Literatures (SAIL) Special Double Issue: How We Teach Indigenous Literatures edited by Michelle Coupal and Deanna Reder, vol. 34, numbers 1-2, Spring-Summer 2022, pp. 112-134.
Watchman analyzes the course content and assignments of her three-credit course, Indigenous Film: “From Hollywood to the Fourth World,” taught at the second-year and third-year levels, which introduce students to global Indigenous film studies.
Watchman, Renae. “Igniting Conciliation & Counting Coup as Redress: Red Reasoning in Tailfeathers, Johnson, and Lindberg.” Studies in Canadian Literature, special issue of “Indigenous Literary Arts of Truth and Redress,” edited by Cynthia Sugars and John Ball, vol 46, issue 2, May 2022, pp. 213-233.
Watchman focuses on Indigenous women and their truths as they use “Red Reasoning” to respond to violent colonial structures and relationships. Watchman discusses the film A Red Girl’s Reasoning, Lindberg’s novel Birdie, counting coup for conciliation undertaken by Indigenous women for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, and community-led conciliatory action as a model for redress and ultimately restorative justice.
Watchman, Renae, et al. “Building Transdisciplinary Relationships: Indigenous and German Studies.” Seminar : a Journal of Germanic Studies, vol. 55, no. 4, November 2019, pp. 309–27.
The special issue maps the divergences between Indigenous Studies and German Studies that have kept them separate and includes essays that identify their convergences and the development of transdisciplinary and potentially decolonizing relationships.