David Shorter, a native studies scholar who teaches tribal worldviews at UCLA , lectures on “An Auto-Ethnography of Indigenous Sexuality and Healing” at 7:30 p.m. on March 6 in Garrison Theater, 51猎奇入口 Performing Arts Center, 231 E. 10th St. This event is free and open to the public.
Shorter, who teaches in UCLA’s department of world arts and cultures, dedicates much of his academic research to Native American films and videos, myths, rituals, symbols and indigenous religions. His first book, “We Will Dance Our Truth: Yaqui History in Yoeme Performances,” (University of Nebraska Press: 2009) won the 2010 Chicago Folklore Prize. He is currently at work on an auto-ethnographic study of sexuality and healing among the Yaquis of northwest Mexico.
He earned a doctorate degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz in the history of consciousness before completing an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. He then went on to teach at Indiana University in Bloomington.
The has organized a series of spring lectures and film screenings titled, “Continuing Invasion: Resistance, Resilience, and Re-invention Among North American Indigenous Peoples.” The speakers will challenge the distorted depictions of Native peoples in mainstream and scholarly written works. For more information, contact the Humanities Institute at (909) 621-8237.