American Indian Literature and the Southwest: Contexts and Dispositions

Front Cover
University of Texas Press, May 28, 2010 - Literary Criticism - 239 pages

Culture-to-culture encounters between "natives" and "aliens" have gone on for centuries in the American Southwest—among American Indian tribes, between American Indians and Euro-Americans, and even, according to some, between humans and extraterrestrials at Roswell, New Mexico. Drawing on a wide range of cultural productions including novels, films, paintings, comic strips, and historical studies, this groundbreaking book explores the Southwest as both a real and a culturally constructed site of migration and encounter, in which the very identities of "alien" and "native" shift with each act of travel.

Eric Anderson pursues his inquiry through an unprecedented range of cultural texts. These include the Roswell spacecraft myths, Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead, Wendy Rose's poetry, the outlaw narratives of Billy the Kid, Apache autobiographies by Geronimo and Jason Betzinez, paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe, New West history by Patricia Nelson Limerick, Frank Norris' McTeague, Mary Austin's The Land of Little Rain, Sarah Winnemucca's Life Among the Piutes, Willa Cather's The Professor's House, George Herriman's modernist comic strip Krazy Kat, and A. A. Carr's Navajo-vampire novel Eye Killers.

 

Selected pages

Contents

Illustrations
Migration and Resistance in American
Billy the Kid and the Outlaw
Geronimo and Jason Betzinez
Mary AustinSarah Winnemucca andthe Problems of Authority
Conclusion CrossPurposesand PurposefulCrossings
Works Cited
Copyright

Other editions - View all

American Indian Literature and the Southwest: Contexts and Dispositions
Eric Gary Anderson
Limited preview - 1999
American Indian Literature and the Southwest: Contexts and Dispositions
Eric Gary Anderson
No preview available - 1999

Common terms and phrases

aesthetic alien Almanac American Indian American Southwest andin andthe Apache argues Arizona aswell Austin autobiography beauty Betzinez Billy the Kid borders boundaries Cather Ceremony Chapter characters colonial comic strip complex constructions contexts cultural Dead death dentist describes desert encounters Euro Euro–American example figure frontier frontier thesis George Herriman Geronimo Havenon Herriman Hopi human identity ideological Ignatz images imaginative indigenous intertribal inthe King features Syndicate Krazy Kat land Limerick literary McTeague McTeague’s mesa metaphor Mexico migration migratory mobility Monument Valley moving narrative Native American Navajo Norris Norris’s novel O’Connell O’Keeffe ofhis ofthe onthe Outland outlaws Paiute paradoxically particular perhaps photographs physical places political Professor’s House Pueblo readers region Reprinted with special resistance Roosevelt Roswell sense Seyavi Silko southwestern space stories storytelling suggests textual thedesert tobe Tom’s tothe tribal tribe Turner twentieth–century vampires variety western Winnemucca withthe words writes Yellow Woman

About the author (2010)

Eric Gary Anderson is Associate Professor of English at George Mason University, where he teaches American and Native American literatures.

Bibliographic information

TitleAmerican Indian Literature and the Southwest: Contexts and Dispositions
AuthorEric Gary Anderson
PublisherUniversity of Texas Press, 2010
ISBN0292783930, 9780292783935
Length239 pages
Subjects › 

Literary Criticism / General
Literary Criticism / Indigenous Peoples in the Americas
  
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