Denise T. Askin
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195390971
- eISBN:
- 9780199777099
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195390971.003.0008
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity, Church History
It is a well-known argument that Calvin’s influence, particularly in the New England tradition, is a foundational element of the national literary identity of the United States. A less well-traveled ...
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It is a well-known argument that Calvin’s influence, particularly in the New England tradition, is a foundational element of the national literary identity of the United States. A less well-traveled path, however, is the journey Calvin made into the world of the American Indian, a journey most significantly realized in the preaching and literary efforts of the Mohegan missionary, Samson Occom. Throughout his long career as a Presbyterian minister, Occom preached thousands of sermons, both formal and spontaneous, scholarly and simple. This chapter addresses Occom’s use of literary and rhetorical devices in his sermons, focusing particularly on his style, strategies, and cultural message and distinguishes the several "voices" he used in giving utterance to Calvin’s theology among the Native American and frontier populations of North America at the dawn of its national identity.Less
It is a well-known argument that Calvin’s influence, particularly in the New England tradition, is a foundational element of the national literary identity of the United States. A less well-traveled path, however, is the journey Calvin made into the world of the American Indian, a journey most significantly realized in the preaching and literary efforts of the Mohegan missionary, Samson Occom. Throughout his long career as a Presbyterian minister, Occom preached thousands of sermons, both formal and spontaneous, scholarly and simple. This chapter addresses Occom’s use of literary and rhetorical devices in his sermons, focusing particularly on his style, strategies, and cultural message and distinguishes the several "voices" he used in giving utterance to Calvin’s theology among the Native American and frontier populations of North America at the dawn of its national identity.
Joanna Brooks
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195332919
- eISBN:
- 9780199851263
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195332919.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This introductory chapter sets out the purpose of the book, which is to reconstruct the founding moments of African American and Native American literatures. These American literary traditions ...
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This introductory chapter sets out the purpose of the book, which is to reconstruct the founding moments of African American and Native American literatures. These American literary traditions emerged during the era of the American Revolution, when blacks and Indians faced not only the crushing legacies of slavery and colonization but also the chaos of war, epidemic, resettlement, exile, and the political uncertainties of the new nation. It seeks to advance our understanding of how race was lived and how racial identities were formed in 18th-century America. It shows how the earliest African American and Native American authors used religion and literature as instruments for transforming the meaning of race. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.Less
This introductory chapter sets out the purpose of the book, which is to reconstruct the founding moments of African American and Native American literatures. These American literary traditions emerged during the era of the American Revolution, when blacks and Indians faced not only the crushing legacies of slavery and colonization but also the chaos of war, epidemic, resettlement, exile, and the political uncertainties of the new nation. It seeks to advance our understanding of how race was lived and how racial identities were formed in 18th-century America. It shows how the earliest African American and Native American authors used religion and literature as instruments for transforming the meaning of race. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.
Joanna Brooks
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195332919
- eISBN:
- 9780199851263
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195332919.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This chapter examines a literary work important to the Brotherton movement, the most extensive and influential project of Samson Occom's literary career: A Choice Collection of Hymns and Spiritual ...
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This chapter examines a literary work important to the Brotherton movement, the most extensive and influential project of Samson Occom's literary career: A Choice Collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs; Intended for the Edification of Sincere Christians, of All Denominations. Occom published this collection of 109 hymns in April 1774, just as the Brotherton compact was being finalized. It set a precedent as one of the first interdenominational American hymnals; it also premiered hymn texts by leading British, American, and Native American hymn writers, including Occom himself.Less
This chapter examines a literary work important to the Brotherton movement, the most extensive and influential project of Samson Occom's literary career: A Choice Collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs; Intended for the Edification of Sincere Christians, of All Denominations. Occom published this collection of 109 hymns in April 1774, just as the Brotherton compact was being finalized. It set a precedent as one of the first interdenominational American hymnals; it also premiered hymn texts by leading British, American, and Native American hymn writers, including Occom himself.
Cyrus R. K. Patell
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479893720
- eISBN:
- 9781479879502
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479893720.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter discusses the liberation movements of the 1960s and the emergent writing that followed. During the 1960s, literature had played a crucial role in the formation of ethnic identity and the ...
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This chapter discusses the liberation movements of the 1960s and the emergent writing that followed. During the 1960s, literature had played a crucial role in the formation of ethnic identity and the creation of ethnic pride. Proponents of Hispanic American literature built upon a tradition as far back as the sixteenth century. The 1960s also saw the creation of a new pan-Indian consciousness exemplified by the Chicago Conference of 1961, which brought together hundreds of Native Americans from different tribes to discuss issues of common interest. Meanwhile, for Asian Americans, the 1960s offered a different legacy, in the form of the law-abiding “model minority.” And finally, though gay and lesbian writing has been around since the time of Socrates and Sappho, gay and lesbian literature as a field only emerged during the late 1960s.Less
This chapter discusses the liberation movements of the 1960s and the emergent writing that followed. During the 1960s, literature had played a crucial role in the formation of ethnic identity and the creation of ethnic pride. Proponents of Hispanic American literature built upon a tradition as far back as the sixteenth century. The 1960s also saw the creation of a new pan-Indian consciousness exemplified by the Chicago Conference of 1961, which brought together hundreds of Native Americans from different tribes to discuss issues of common interest. Meanwhile, for Asian Americans, the 1960s offered a different legacy, in the form of the law-abiding “model minority.” And finally, though gay and lesbian writing has been around since the time of Socrates and Sappho, gay and lesbian literature as a field only emerged during the late 1960s.
Katy L. Chiles
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199313501
- eISBN:
- 9780199350728
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199313501.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 18th Century and Early American Literature
Racial thought at the close of the eighteenth century differed radically from that of the nineteenth century, when the concept of race as a fixed biological category would emerge. Instead, many early ...
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Racial thought at the close of the eighteenth century differed radically from that of the nineteenth century, when the concept of race as a fixed biological category would emerge. Instead, many early Americans thought that race was an exterior bodily trait, incrementally produced by environmental factors, and continuously subject to change. While historians have documented aspects of eighteenth-century racial thought, Transformable Race is the first scholarly book that identifies how this thinking informs the figurative language in the literature of this crucial period. It argues that the notion of transformable race structured how early American texts portrayed the formation of racial identities. Examining figures such as Phillis Wheatley, Benjamin Franklin, Samson Occom, and Charles Brockden Brown, Transformable Race demonstrates how these authors used language emphasizing or questioning the potential malleability of physical features to explore the construction of racial categories. For early American studies, this project replaces prevailing critical race frameworks particular to later periods with one more fitting for early America. In critical race studies, this book illuminates how in this early literature identities take form through one’s potential to transform from one race into another. Transformable Race posits a historically specific, transformational model of critical race theory that refigures our understanding of racialization in early American literature and, in turn, offers critical race studies a new way of understanding racial formation.Less
Racial thought at the close of the eighteenth century differed radically from that of the nineteenth century, when the concept of race as a fixed biological category would emerge. Instead, many early Americans thought that race was an exterior bodily trait, incrementally produced by environmental factors, and continuously subject to change. While historians have documented aspects of eighteenth-century racial thought, Transformable Race is the first scholarly book that identifies how this thinking informs the figurative language in the literature of this crucial period. It argues that the notion of transformable race structured how early American texts portrayed the formation of racial identities. Examining figures such as Phillis Wheatley, Benjamin Franklin, Samson Occom, and Charles Brockden Brown, Transformable Race demonstrates how these authors used language emphasizing or questioning the potential malleability of physical features to explore the construction of racial categories. For early American studies, this project replaces prevailing critical race frameworks particular to later periods with one more fitting for early America. In critical race studies, this book illuminates how in this early literature identities take form through one’s potential to transform from one race into another. Transformable Race posits a historically specific, transformational model of critical race theory that refigures our understanding of racialization in early American literature and, in turn, offers critical race studies a new way of understanding racial formation.
Lisa Tatonetti
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816692781
- eISBN:
- 9781452949642
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816692781.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Native American Studies
This chapter offers a provisional history of the authors, genres, and subjects of queer Native studies, narrating a map of relationships and thereby providing a much needed genealogy of the field. It ...
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This chapter offers a provisional history of the authors, genres, and subjects of queer Native studies, narrating a map of relationships and thereby providing a much needed genealogy of the field. It exhumes and invigorates genealogical connections, and as a way to demonstrate that the seeming renaissance of the twenty-first century stems from deep and abiding roots and long-standing Indigenous intellectual traditions. It also contributes to the ongoing conversation about queer images and texts in Native American and Aboriginal literatures.Less
This chapter offers a provisional history of the authors, genres, and subjects of queer Native studies, narrating a map of relationships and thereby providing a much needed genealogy of the field. It exhumes and invigorates genealogical connections, and as a way to demonstrate that the seeming renaissance of the twenty-first century stems from deep and abiding roots and long-standing Indigenous intellectual traditions. It also contributes to the ongoing conversation about queer images and texts in Native American and Aboriginal literatures.
Lisa Tatonetti
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816692781
- eISBN:
- 9781452949642
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816692781.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Native American Studies
With a new and more inclusive perspective for the growing field of queer Native studies, this book provides a genealogy of queer Native writing after Stonewall. Looking across a broad range of ...
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With a new and more inclusive perspective for the growing field of queer Native studies, this book provides a genealogy of queer Native writing after Stonewall. Looking across a broad range of literature, the text offers an overview and guide to queer Native literature from its rise in the 1970s to the present day. This book recovers ties between two simultaneous renaissances of the late twentieth century: queer literature and Native American literature. It foregrounds how Indigeneity intervenes within and against dominant interpretations of queer genders and sexualities, recovering unfamiliar texts from the 1970s while presenting fresh, cogent readings of well-known works. In juxtaposing the work of Native authors—including the longtime writer-activist Paula Gunn Allen, the first contemporary queer Native writer Maurice Kenny, the poet Janice Gould, the novelist Louise Erdrich, and the filmmakers Sherman Alexie, Thomas Bezucha, and Jorge Manuel Manzano—with the work of queer studies scholars, the book proposes resourceful interventions in foundational concepts in queer studies while also charting new directions for queer Native studies.Less
With a new and more inclusive perspective for the growing field of queer Native studies, this book provides a genealogy of queer Native writing after Stonewall. Looking across a broad range of literature, the text offers an overview and guide to queer Native literature from its rise in the 1970s to the present day. This book recovers ties between two simultaneous renaissances of the late twentieth century: queer literature and Native American literature. It foregrounds how Indigeneity intervenes within and against dominant interpretations of queer genders and sexualities, recovering unfamiliar texts from the 1970s while presenting fresh, cogent readings of well-known works. In juxtaposing the work of Native authors—including the longtime writer-activist Paula Gunn Allen, the first contemporary queer Native writer Maurice Kenny, the poet Janice Gould, the novelist Louise Erdrich, and the filmmakers Sherman Alexie, Thomas Bezucha, and Jorge Manuel Manzano—with the work of queer studies scholars, the book proposes resourceful interventions in foundational concepts in queer studies while also charting new directions for queer Native studies.
Mishuana Goeman
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816677900
- eISBN:
- 9781452948218
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816677900.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
In the Introduction I lay out the groundwork for gendered spatial violence and the concept of (re)mapping that I use throughout the book.
In the Introduction I lay out the groundwork for gendered spatial violence and the concept of (re)mapping that I use throughout the book.
David Stirrup
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719074264
- eISBN:
- 9781781702581
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719074264.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Louise Erdrich is one of the most critically and commercially successful Native American writers. This book is a fully comprehensive treatment of her writing, analysing the textual complexities and ...
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Louise Erdrich is one of the most critically and commercially successful Native American writers. This book is a fully comprehensive treatment of her writing, analysing the textual complexities and diverse contexts of her work to date. Drawing on the critical archive relating to Erdrich's work and Native American literature, it explores the full depth and range of her authorship. Breaking Erdrich's oeuvre into several groupings – poetry, early and late fiction, memoir and children's writing – it develops individual readings of both the critical arguments and the texts themselves. The book argues that Erdrich's work has developed an increasing political acuity to the relationship between ethics and aesthetics in Native American literature, and her insistence on being read as an American writer is shown to be in constant and mutually inflecting dialogue with her Ojibwe heritage.Less
Louise Erdrich is one of the most critically and commercially successful Native American writers. This book is a fully comprehensive treatment of her writing, analysing the textual complexities and diverse contexts of her work to date. Drawing on the critical archive relating to Erdrich's work and Native American literature, it explores the full depth and range of her authorship. Breaking Erdrich's oeuvre into several groupings – poetry, early and late fiction, memoir and children's writing – it develops individual readings of both the critical arguments and the texts themselves. The book argues that Erdrich's work has developed an increasing political acuity to the relationship between ethics and aesthetics in Native American literature, and her insistence on being read as an American writer is shown to be in constant and mutually inflecting dialogue with her Ojibwe heritage.
Mishuana Goeman
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816677900
- eISBN:
- 9781452948218
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816677900.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
Mishuana Goeman provides feminist interventions into an analysis of colonial spatial restructuring of Native lands and bodies in the twentieth century. Through an examination of the ways that Native ...
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Mishuana Goeman provides feminist interventions into an analysis of colonial spatial restructuring of Native lands and bodies in the twentieth century. Through an examination of the ways that Native women's poetry and prose reveal settler colonialism in North America as an enduring form of gendered spatial violence, she continually ask how rigid spatial categories, such as nations, borders, reservations, and urban areas are formed by settler nation-states structuring of space. As Native people become mobile, reserv/ation land bases become overcrowded, and the state seeks to enforce means of containment and close its borders to incoming, often indigenous, immigrants, it is imperative to refocus Native nations efforts beyond replicating settler models of territory, jurisdiction, borders, and race. The authors imagining of such alternative to gendered and colonial spatial violence, territorial property logics, and uneven regimes of capitalist accumulation and dispossession have deep roots in narrative geographies, thus providing the basis for her Native feminist interventions. The book brings multiple fields into this complex conversation such as Native American Studies, Literary and Cultural Studies, Feminist and Gender Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Cultural Geography, and American Studies. In (re)mapping colonial logics, Native people hold the power to rethink the way they engage with territory, relationships to each other and with other Native nations and settler nations. It is these stories that will lead the way as they have for generations.Less
Mishuana Goeman provides feminist interventions into an analysis of colonial spatial restructuring of Native lands and bodies in the twentieth century. Through an examination of the ways that Native women's poetry and prose reveal settler colonialism in North America as an enduring form of gendered spatial violence, she continually ask how rigid spatial categories, such as nations, borders, reservations, and urban areas are formed by settler nation-states structuring of space. As Native people become mobile, reserv/ation land bases become overcrowded, and the state seeks to enforce means of containment and close its borders to incoming, often indigenous, immigrants, it is imperative to refocus Native nations efforts beyond replicating settler models of territory, jurisdiction, borders, and race. The authors imagining of such alternative to gendered and colonial spatial violence, territorial property logics, and uneven regimes of capitalist accumulation and dispossession have deep roots in narrative geographies, thus providing the basis for her Native feminist interventions. The book brings multiple fields into this complex conversation such as Native American Studies, Literary and Cultural Studies, Feminist and Gender Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Cultural Geography, and American Studies. In (re)mapping colonial logics, Native people hold the power to rethink the way they engage with territory, relationships to each other and with other Native nations and settler nations. It is these stories that will lead the way as they have for generations.
Mishuana Goeman
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816677900
- eISBN:
- 9781452948218
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816677900.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
Chapter two, the poetry of Esther Belin enables us to begin to imagine alternatives from the exclusion promoted through gendered indigenous policies. Through literary and cultural maps Belin enables ...
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Chapter two, the poetry of Esther Belin enables us to begin to imagine alternatives from the exclusion promoted through gendered indigenous policies. Through literary and cultural maps Belin enables us to work through the colonial restructuring of lands and bodies meted out through the policies of Termination and Relocation in the 1950's-70's.Less
Chapter two, the poetry of Esther Belin enables us to begin to imagine alternatives from the exclusion promoted through gendered indigenous policies. Through literary and cultural maps Belin enables us to work through the colonial restructuring of lands and bodies meted out through the policies of Termination and Relocation in the 1950's-70's.
Mishuana Goeman
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816677900
- eISBN:
- 9781452948218
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816677900.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
Chapter four continues the examination of global violence and connects it to early forms of literary mappings, by examining Leslie Marmon Silko's epic novel Almanac of the Dead. The use of narrative ...
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Chapter four continues the examination of global violence and connects it to early forms of literary mappings, by examining Leslie Marmon Silko's epic novel Almanac of the Dead. The use of narrative as counterparts to producing and being productive of space have led to great spatial injustice in the wake of neoliberal policies that seek to further privatize spaces from that of the body to land. By connecting the early spatial restructuring to that of the turn of the century, we are able to see the on-going effects of colonial spatial restructuring and find solutions for (re)mapping our nations.Less
Chapter four continues the examination of global violence and connects it to early forms of literary mappings, by examining Leslie Marmon Silko's epic novel Almanac of the Dead. The use of narrative as counterparts to producing and being productive of space have led to great spatial injustice in the wake of neoliberal policies that seek to further privatize spaces from that of the body to land. By connecting the early spatial restructuring to that of the turn of the century, we are able to see the on-going effects of colonial spatial restructuring and find solutions for (re)mapping our nations.
Lisa Tatonetti
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816692781
- eISBN:
- 9781452949642
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816692781.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Native American Studies
This concluding chapter answers the question of what can be gained by considering “the queerness” of Native American literature. Queering Indigenous literary history and engaging specifically queer ...
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This concluding chapter answers the question of what can be gained by considering “the queerness” of Native American literature. Queering Indigenous literary history and engaging specifically queer Indigenous literary history forces the reconsideration of foundational moments in Native studies. The writers, artists, and scholars discussed in this book both build upon and extend pre-existing intellectual genealogies and geographies. These genealogies and geographies represent archives of more diverse social roles, indexes of creative kinship relations, and essential meaning-making practices through which to generate and organize knowledge. Examining Indigenous erotics not only strengthens approaches to queer and Indigenous studies but also forwards restorative decolonial practices.Less
This concluding chapter answers the question of what can be gained by considering “the queerness” of Native American literature. Queering Indigenous literary history and engaging specifically queer Indigenous literary history forces the reconsideration of foundational moments in Native studies. The writers, artists, and scholars discussed in this book both build upon and extend pre-existing intellectual genealogies and geographies. These genealogies and geographies represent archives of more diverse social roles, indexes of creative kinship relations, and essential meaning-making practices through which to generate and organize knowledge. Examining Indigenous erotics not only strengthens approaches to queer and Indigenous studies but also forwards restorative decolonial practices.
Mishuana Goeman
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816677900
- eISBN:
- 9781452948218
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816677900.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
In chapter one, an examination of two short stories by E. Pauline Johnson exemplify the interstices of race, gender, and nation as they pertain to the concept of civilizing Indians and excluding ...
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In chapter one, an examination of two short stories by E. Pauline Johnson exemplify the interstices of race, gender, and nation as they pertain to the concept of civilizing Indians and excluding Native women from national spaces (both First Nation and Canada) through the Indian Act in the early 1900's. Johnson, through her heroines and the intimate act of marriage and public act of citizenship, speaks to the colonial restructuring of Native lands and bodies.Less
In chapter one, an examination of two short stories by E. Pauline Johnson exemplify the interstices of race, gender, and nation as they pertain to the concept of civilizing Indians and excluding Native women from national spaces (both First Nation and Canada) through the Indian Act in the early 1900's. Johnson, through her heroines and the intimate act of marriage and public act of citizenship, speaks to the colonial restructuring of Native lands and bodies.
Mishuana Goeman
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816677900
- eISBN:
- 9781452948218
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816677900.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
Chapter three furthers the methods of indigenous women's use of literary maps to work through various spatial injustices that particularly effected women of color throughout the 1980-1990's. Joy ...
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Chapter three furthers the methods of indigenous women's use of literary maps to work through various spatial injustices that particularly effected women of color throughout the 1980-1990's. Joy Harjo enables us to see the relationship between local spaces and global violences and indigenous methods for healing the rift caused by NAFTA and the policies leading up to its enactment.Less
Chapter three furthers the methods of indigenous women's use of literary maps to work through various spatial injustices that particularly effected women of color throughout the 1980-1990's. Joy Harjo enables us to see the relationship between local spaces and global violences and indigenous methods for healing the rift caused by NAFTA and the policies leading up to its enactment.
Angela Calcaterra
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469646947
- eISBN:
- 9781469646961
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469646947.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American Colonial Literature
Although cross-cultural encounter is often considered an economic or political matter, beauty, taste, and artistry were central to cultural exchange and political negotiation in early and ...
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Although cross-cultural encounter is often considered an economic or political matter, beauty, taste, and artistry were central to cultural exchange and political negotiation in early and nineteenth-century America. Part of a new wave of scholarship in early American studies that contextualizes American writing in Indigenous space, Literary Indians highlights the significance of Indigenous aesthetic practices to American literary production. Countering the prevailing notion of the “literary Indian” as a construct of the white American literary imagination, Angela Calcaterra reveals how Native people’s pre-existing and evolving aesthetic practices influenced Anglo-American writing in precise ways. Indigenous aesthetics helped to establish borders and foster alliances that pushed against Anglo-American settlement practices and contributed to the discursive, divided, unfinished aspects of American letters. Focusing on tribal histories and Indigenous artistry, Calcaterra locates surprising connections and important distinctions between Native and Anglo-American literary aesthetics in a new history of early American encounter, identity, literature, and culture.Less
Although cross-cultural encounter is often considered an economic or political matter, beauty, taste, and artistry were central to cultural exchange and political negotiation in early and nineteenth-century America. Part of a new wave of scholarship in early American studies that contextualizes American writing in Indigenous space, Literary Indians highlights the significance of Indigenous aesthetic practices to American literary production. Countering the prevailing notion of the “literary Indian” as a construct of the white American literary imagination, Angela Calcaterra reveals how Native people’s pre-existing and evolving aesthetic practices influenced Anglo-American writing in precise ways. Indigenous aesthetics helped to establish borders and foster alliances that pushed against Anglo-American settlement practices and contributed to the discursive, divided, unfinished aspects of American letters. Focusing on tribal histories and Indigenous artistry, Calcaterra locates surprising connections and important distinctions between Native and Anglo-American literary aesthetics in a new history of early American encounter, identity, literature, and culture.
Eric Cheyfitz and Shari M. Huhndorf
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- June 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190456368
- eISBN:
- 9780190456399
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190456368.003.0016
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Louise Erdrich’s prize-winning novel The Round House tells a story about rape on the reservation that reflects on alarmingly high rates of sexual violence against Native women and the roots of this ...
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Louise Erdrich’s prize-winning novel The Round House tells a story about rape on the reservation that reflects on alarmingly high rates of sexual violence against Native women and the roots of this violence in federal Indian law. This chapter takes the novel as a starting point for analyzing contrasts between indigenous and European conceptions of law, including the relationship between law and literature, and the ways that federal Indian law has historically served as an instrument of genocide and colonial expansion. Erdrich’s novel, the chapter argues, draws out the material consequences of the legal and political disempowerment of tribes and the imposition of federal legal authority, and it upholds tribal law as providing the sole path to justice in colonial contexts.Less
Louise Erdrich’s prize-winning novel The Round House tells a story about rape on the reservation that reflects on alarmingly high rates of sexual violence against Native women and the roots of this violence in federal Indian law. This chapter takes the novel as a starting point for analyzing contrasts between indigenous and European conceptions of law, including the relationship between law and literature, and the ways that federal Indian law has historically served as an instrument of genocide and colonial expansion. Erdrich’s novel, the chapter argues, draws out the material consequences of the legal and political disempowerment of tribes and the imposition of federal legal authority, and it upholds tribal law as providing the sole path to justice in colonial contexts.
