A History of Western American Literature

by Susan Kollin (Editor)

Overview

The American West is a complex region that has inspired generations of writers and artists. Often portrayed as a quintessential landscape that symbolizes promise and progress for a developing nation, the American West is also a diverse space that has experienced conflicting and competing hopes and expectations. While it is frequently imagined as a place enabling dreams of new beginnings for settler communities, it is likewise home to long-standing indigenous populations as well as many other ethnic and racial groups who have often produced different visions of the land. This History encompasses the intricacy of Western American literature by exploring myriad genres and cultural movements, from ecocriticism, settler colonial studies and transnational theory, to race, ethnic, gender and sexuality studies. Written by a host of leading historians and literary critics, this book offers readers insight into the West as a site that sustains canonical and emerging authors alike, and as a region that exceeds national boundaries in addressing long-standing global concerns and developments.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781316028179
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	12/11/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Susan Kollin is Professor of English at Montana State University, Bozeman, and served as President of the Western Literature Association in 2004. Editor of Postwestern Cultures: Literature, Theory, Space, she is also the author of Nature's State: Imagining Alaska as the Last Frontier.

Table of Contents

1. Indigenous memories and Western American literary history Susan Bernardin; 2. The recovery project and the role of history in Chicano/a literary studies José F. Aranda, Jr; 3. Domestic frontiers: settler narratives by European American women writers Nicole Tonkovich; 4. Labor and the land: narratives of trading, mining, and ranching Nathaniel Lewis; 5. Nature writing and the American West Sarah Jaquette Ray; 6. Tall tales and short stories Nicolas S. Witschi; 7. The popular western Daniel Worden; 8. Literature of the great plains: nature, culture, and community Susan Naramore Maher; 9. Southwest literary borderlands Audrey Goodman; 10. Imagining the Rocky Mountain region Nancy S. Cook; 11. Writing the Pacific Northwest Stephanie LeMenager; 12. The far north: literatures of Alaska and Canada Ernestine Hayes; 13. The problem of the critical in global wests Krista Comer; 14. Early cinematic westerns Christine Bold; 15. The environmental novel of the American West Dana Phillips; 16. Hardboiled fiction and noir narratives Lee Clark Mitchell; 17. The Beats and the American West Robert Bennett; 18. Contested Wests: indigenous Americans and the literature of sovereignty John Gamber; 19. Asian American writers and the making of the Western US landscape Jane Hseu; 20. African American literature: recasting region through race Jonathan Munby; 21. Hollywood westerns: 1930s to the present Andrew Patrick Nelson; 22. Urban new Wests Stephen Tatum; 23. Queer frontiers: gender and sexuality in the American West David Agruss; 24. Post-western literature and criticism Neil Campbell.