LITR 5731: Seminar in American Minority Literature
University of Houston-Clear Lake, fall 2001
Student Research Proposal

Sancar Sallanti

Dear Professor White,

As we talked earlier this week I decided to do a journal on the Ghost Dance. My first offer was to do something on religion but as you said the touch of literature has to be included. Next to being a religious movement, the Ghost Dance is a "dance", which is important in the Native American traditions. In my journal I want to show how the oral transmission of the dance has changed between the tribes. I also want to add Wovoka, the prophet, to my journal as the founder of the dance.

I am still not sure about the outline of my journal, but it will be an organized form of the points written above. From the texts we read in the class I will surely refer to "Black Elk Speak", but also to "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven," where dance is occuring a lot. Out of these, almost every book written about the Native American Indians has a chapter about the Ghost Dance. I will also use these books as reference:

Miller, David H. "Ghost Dance." Ney York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1959.

Mooney, James. "The Ghost Dance Religion." Chicago: Phoenix Books, 1965.

I hope it sounds good to you.

Sancar Sallanti

Dear Sancar,

This is a good start. The subject of dance lies beyond my expertise, but the sources you mention so far appear to be good ones, and they may lead to more. The goal will be to relate what you discover about the dance to the literature that you find on the subject. For instance, in some of the Ghost Dance songs or chants, are choreographic instructions included? Also dance may be somewhat related to another literary form, drama--that is, dance often enacts a story. If such is the case, how did the Ghost Dance correspond to or complement the story being told or implied by the words?

Of course you may continue this project as a journal, but you might also consider the possibilities of an essay on this subject--that is, you might be moving beyond the reportorial functions of a journal to the synthetic and analytic functions of an essay. I mention this not to force you to change but to encourage you to keep this possible change in mind, should your material tend that way.

Another journal option might be to look into the relation between apocalyptic movements and dance or kinetics. The "Quakers" were one example, and many other apocalyptic movements appear to involve the body in either choreographed or ecstatic motions.

You might also do some searches involving American Indian dance, both on the Web and in the MLA and Social Sciences Index databases in the library. It all sounds very interesting.