Western American Literature最新文献

{"title":"Valley of Giants: Stories from Women at the Heart of Yosemite Climbing ed. by Lauren Delaunay Miller (review)","authors":"Peter L. Bayers","doi":"10.1353/wal.2024.a924881","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wal.2024.a924881","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Valley of Giants: Stories from Women at the Heart of Yosemite Climbing</em> ed. by Lauren Delaunay Miller <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Peter L. Bayers </li> </ul> Lauren Delaunay Miller, ed., <em>Valley of Giants: Stories from Women at the Heart of Yosemite Climbing</em>. Seattle: Mountaineers Books, 2022. 240 pp. Paper, $21.95. <p>Yosemite Valley is a mythical Western landscape in US climbing lore, and nothing better captures this mythos than the award-winning film <em>Valley Uprising</em> (2014). Drawing from frontier mythology and western tropes of the outlaw male hero, the film recounts the ground-breaking climbing achievements of hypermasculine individual climbers and the hedonistic counterculture of the Yosemite climbing scene from the 1950s to the first decade of the twenty-first century. Judging from the film, the story of Yosemite climbing has been—with but one exception in Lynn Hill—the prerogative of white males who competed with one another to demonstrate their prowess on the cliff formations of the Valley. If women had a role in Yosemite, it was primarily as an object of desire for the fraternity of \"manly\" men.</p> <p>Lauren Delaunay Miller's <em>Valley of Giants</em>, a compelling anthology of thirty-eight original and previously published interviews, letters, memoirs, and essays from (almost exclusively) white women climbers is a welcome feminist counter-history to the mythic story of Yosemite climbing. Though today women climbers in Yosemite abound, Miller writes that the stories in this anthology \"demonstrate that women have always been at the center of Yosemite climbing\" (16), as far back as the 1930s. Though for decades their numbers were relatively small compared to the male population, <em>Valley of Giants</em> underscores that, like many of their male counterparts, women climbers lived for months at a time as countercultural \"dirtbags\" scraping by with their male peers in \"Camp 4,\" and they were as—if not more—capable as many of their male peers in their climbing ability.</p> <p>Though many male climbers considered women equal in ability, <strong>[End Page 377]</strong> the sad—and, given the historical context, unsurprising—reality was that women were patronized and disparaged by other men, for example, when in the early 1970s one male climber made the contemptible comment to Ellie Hawkins that \"women were talented in cooking and sewing but didn't have the spatial intelligence\" to ascend the massive cliffs (101). But these women suffer no male fools, illustrated by 1960s climber Jan Sacherer, who relates an incident about how her first husband belittled her on a climb. Infuriated, she responded by unroping and downclimbing a section of the cliff, \"leaving him alone and aghast,\" after which she never \"climbed with him or any man in Yosemite\" (54). And capturing the egregi","PeriodicalId":23875,"journal":{"name":"Western American Literature","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140616270","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Bears Ears: Landscape of Refuge and Resistance by Andrew Gulliford (review)","authors":"Eytan Pol","doi":"10.1353/wal.2024.a924890","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wal.2024.a924890","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Bears Ears: Landscape of Refuge and Resistance</em> by Andrew Gulliford <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Eytan Pol </li> </ul> Andrew Gulliford, <em>Bears Ears: Landscape of Refuge and Resistance</em>. Salt Lake City: U of Utah P, 2022. 541 pp. Hardcover, $95; paper, $29.95; e-book $24. <p>In <em>Bears Ears</em> Andrew Gulliford describes the history of the Bears Ears region in San Juan County, from hunter gatherers and Navajo refugees to Mormon settlers and Uranium hunters. Readers familiar with the Four Corners area, specifically southeastern Utah, will recognize and learn the origins of many landmarks, such as Comb Ridge and the Moki Dugway. The number of old images and maps signal the impressive archival work that has gone into the creation of <em>Bears Ears: Landscape of Refuge and Resistance</em>. The book culminates in the current legal, environmental, and cultural battle on the status of the landscape of Bears Ears as a national monument. As Gulliford explains, the monument was established <strong>[End Page 398]</strong> under the Obama administration, based on the Antiquities Act of 1906, marking the first time this law was used for the creation of a national monument.</p> <p>What sets <em>Bears Ears</em> apart from similar accounts of national parks or national monuments is Gulliford's personal narrative that he has woven into the history of Bears Ears National Monument. Gulliford quotes Jedediah Rogers's call for more work that blends \"personal memoir and environmental history,\" and sets out to deliver (xiv). When we read the history of the multiple-colored hues of the native corn, he tells us about the red and blue corn seeds an old student of his gave him. When he explains how the Ancient Puebloans had to walk over dangerously exposed ledges, he recounts his own sweaty and scary explorations over these cliffs. And when he explains the damage caused by pothunters, he reveals how he has found plenty of pot shards and arrowheads himself, and left them in place. Gulliford is not a tourist in this area, but he has rather accepted the label of \"local outsider\": \"yes, we're local, and as much as we can be, yes, we're outside\" (x). He does not just talk about petroglyphs; he visits them. The reader presumably cares about Bears Ears National Monument enough to pick up such a large tome on the area, and it is clear from the narrative that Gulliford himself deeply cares about Bears Ears too, and therefore, we as the readers care about Gulliford's stories. And because we care, it is easy to permit Gulliford the occasional anecdote on tangentially related topics, such as Everrett Ruess's travels.</p> <p><em>Bears Ears</em> is about Bears Ears National Monument, but in the end, the books deals with more than just this sparsely populated, wild and remote region in southeastern Utah. Bears Ears serves","PeriodicalId":23875,"journal":{"name":"Western American Literature","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140616287","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"This Contested Land: The Storied Past and Uncertain Future of America's National Monuments by McKenzie Long (review)","authors":"Talley V. Kayser","doi":"10.1353/wal.2024.a924885","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wal.2024.a924885","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>This Contested Land: The Storied Past and Uncertain Future of America's National Monuments</em> by McKenzie Long <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Talley V. Kayser </li> </ul> McKenzie Long, <em>This Contested Land: The Storied Past and Uncertain Future of America's National Monuments</em>. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2022. 280 pp. Hardcover, $24.95. <p><em>This Contested Land</em> opens with the words \"look behind you\"; the epilogue is titled \"Looking Forward.\" In the space between McKenzie Long does both, using her own outdoor adventures to frame meditations on the histories, presents, and futures of national monuments in the United States. The resulting essays examine topics from nuclear storage to land art, from Indigenous activism to mining policy—but no matter the subject, <em>This Contested Land</em> resists quick judgment, instead portraying American dissent over protected land as complex, dynamic, and vital.</p> <p>\"Monuments,\" as Long sees them, \"are quintessentially American. After all, what is more American than disagreement over the scope of governmental power?\" (xxvii). Readers aware of the controversies around Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante will find in <em>This Contested Land</em> a clear overview of the \"national monument\" designation, including cogent explanation of why the 1906 Antiquities Act leaves national monuments so vulnerable to political vicissitudes. <em>This Contested Land</em> is more notable, however, for its attention to fascinating, less nationally known places protected under the Antiquities Act. For example, Long examines publicly accessible land turned abruptly private (Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument); land that legally belongs to the descendants of nineteenth-century Mexican citizens whose property \"absorbed\" into the United States as borders changed (Rio Grande del Norte National Monument); and the largest contiguous conservation area in the United States, which is actually made of ocean (Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument). Long describes her project as an \"exploration in storytelling\" consisting of \"sketches of people and places\" (xxvi)—this text doesn't aspire to be a comprehensive history or push the boundaries of environmental philosophy. Still, the thirteen featured monuments invite reflection on ethics, and Long leans into those opportunities with accessible, grounded-in-place musings on topics like anthropocentrism, the nature–culture dualism, hyperobjects, and settlers' accountability (or lack thereof) to genocidal violence. <strong>[End Page 388]</strong></p> <p>Concurrently, each chapter seeks out and records diverse perspectives on national monument use. Whether speaking with ranchers or rock climbers, Long often aims to find common ground. \"It's easy to demonize people with different opinions,\" she notes in one char","PeriodicalId":23875,"journal":{"name":"Western American Literature","volume":"42 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140616311","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Planet Work: Rethinking Labor and Leisure in the Anthropocene ed. by Ryan Hediger (review)","authors":"Jennifer Forsberg","doi":"10.1353/wal.2024.a924884","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wal.2024.a924884","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Planet Work: Rethinking Labor and Leisure in the Anthropocene</em> ed. by Ryan Hediger <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Jennifer Forsberg </li> </ul> Ryan Hediger, ed., <em>Planet Work: Rethinking Labor and Leisure in the Anthropocene</em>. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, 2023. 284 pp. Hardcover, $130; paper, $39.95; e-book, $39.95. <p>The essays that comprise <em>Planet Work</em> sketch out an array of concerns surrounding the definition of the \"Anthropocene\" and provide self-aware scholarship that accounts for all that might—or might not—be included within that term. In particular, much of <strong>[End Page 385]</strong> the defining premise of the volume is to identify the role of labor, an action distinct from work, to construct a nexus of enriched narratives that plot the epochal confluence of capitalism, neoliberalism, extractionist practices, and climate change. Editor Ryan Hediger widely addresses this constellation of social, economic, biological, and ecological issues as \"modern environmental trauma\" (2). The studies that exemplify this trauma span time and space, ranging from harnessing fire in David Rodland's elemental analysis to hypercontemporary contexts surrounding COVID-19.</p> <p>The three-part collection starts with the section \"Questioning 'Anthropocene' Frames,\" which rehearses debated timelines, human and nonhuman labor practices, and the onset of industrial technology. This helpful literature review dramatizes the scholarly debates of the Anthropocene and aims to construct a foundation for the remainder of the volume.</p> <p>These foundations are destabilized in section two, \"Rethinking Work in the Anthropocene,\" with essays that close-read roughly two hundred years' examinations of work situations, including democracy in the \"slaveryocene\" (Hediger 73); the centrality of horses in the English novel (Akilli); the rhetoric of freedom in postbellum agricultural debates (Clausen); and the laboring trope of coming of age in postmodern fiction (Wanat). Especially insightful is James Armstrong's \"The Work of the Globe,\" which provides perceptive contrasts between space-age advancement and the erasure of laboring human populations in the display of the Unisphere at the 1964–65 World's Fair.</p> <p>Section three, \"Learning from Leisure in the Anthropocene,\" hosts the most impactful essays of the collection, offering careful close reading, theoretical cross-examination, and cultural study that account for narrative practices, social engagement, and the specialization of marketplaces alongside the contested labor/leisure binary. One highlight is Jennifer K. Ladino's poignant essay about the National Park Service that examines the \"emotional labor\" of rangers in the National Park Service (187). Ladino identifies the homogeneity of conservationist visibility in the marketplace—à la Ken Burns","PeriodicalId":23875,"journal":{"name":"Western American Literature","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140616316","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Voice to Voice in the Dark by Tim Hunt (review)","authors":"Jeanetta Mish","doi":"10.1353/wal.2024.a924889","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wal.2024.a924889","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Voice to Voice in the Dark</em> by Tim Hunt <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Jeanetta Mish </li> </ul> Tim Hunt, <em>Voice to Voice in the Dark</em>. Frankfort, KY: Broadstone Books, 2022. 112 pp. Paperback, $25, $18.50 direct from publisher. <p>Tim Hunt's <em>Voice to Voice in the Dark</em> explores the philosophical conundrum of everyday space-time and its relationship to memory and story. The collection consists mostly of narrative poems; however, Hunt's facility with figurative language lends lyricism to the work. In \"New Orleans to Austin\" weariness is \"a tired we finger like a bruise\" (19). The speaker of \"Dreaming of Trains\" relates his life as a hobo whose pack is \"a deep hole in the darker night\" (11). In \"Three Ways to Pick Prunes\" the speaker's harvest work bestows \"benedictions of fallen fruit\" (41). <strong>[End Page 396]</strong></p> <p>The first poem after the prologue, \"Vachel Lindsay Walks the Roads of Kansas Offering Poems for Bread,\" introduces two themes of the collection: the lives of ordinary people and meditations on memory, on past and present and \"here\" and \"there.\" In the fifth stanza of \"Vachel Lindsay\" the poem's focus shifts from the famous poet who traded poems for food and shelter to those who shared with him their homes and meals. The speaker recognizes that their hospitality is itself a kind of a poem, \"the one / they understand. / The one they / do not think of as a poem\" (6).</p> <p>Whitmanesque worker-portrait poems include \"New Orleans to Austin,\" which documents an \"all night bus trip\" undertaken to study Kerouac's papers. In a section of the poem about fellow bus travelers, Hunt writes with tenderness about a young girl and her father, a welder. The girl's father talked of the ordinary things: \"walking the girders as the buildings / took shape, the welding, / the moving from job to job—\" (18). \"Swing Shift\" imagines the repetitious life of an assembler who stands \"within a circle of light\" as if he were made \"for this, for / this, for // this\" (9).</p> <p>Again and again Hunt interrogates the irrealities of past and present, here and there. In \"A Photo You Meant to Take,\" he writes of the postmodern preference for simulacra, that \"it is the seeming to be old that counts,\" and that \"the past is an accent, a decor\" (23). \"A Grammar of Things\" begins, \"Things survive past their time,\" then parses the preference for newness, born of a desire to erase the past terrors of World War II: lime green formica tabletops replaced those of stone \"because it says <em>new</em>, says <em>now</em>; / just as dacron and rayon and nylon say <em>now</em>, say <em>different</em> / . . . / it says <em>future</em>, as if <em>then</em> were a dream / no longer dreamed—a long ago the war erased\" (32).</p> <p>In \"The Boy, Discovering Leadbelly, Hears Things He Doesn't Understand\" Hunt w","PeriodicalId":23875,"journal":{"name":"Western American Literature","volume":"306 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140616318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Performing Gender in the Bleeding Kansas Novels of Jane Smiley and James McBride","authors":"Elizabeth Abele","doi":"10.1353/wal.2024.a924878","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wal.2024.a924878","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Performing Gender in the Bleeding Kansas Novels of Jane Smiley and James McBride <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Elizabeth Abele (bio) </li> </ul> <p>After the 1995 bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma, Jane Smiley decided to write a novel about the intersection of American ideology and violence. She turned to 1850s Kansas and radical abolitionist John Brown, publishing <em>The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton</em> in 1998. Not coincidentally, Russell Banks notes that his 1998 John Brown novel <em>Cloudsplitter</em> was inspired by Waco and Ruby Ridge: \"I realized how significantly he figures in the old American weave of violence, politics, religion, race\" (\"Art of Fiction\" 79). Banks dubbed Brown \"the last Puritan and the first modern terrorist\" (82). John Brown and 1850s Kansas emerged at the turn of the millennium as the fullest expression of American ideological passions for American novelists.</p> <p>1850s Kansas was dubbed \"Bleeding Kansas\" for the frequent skirmishes that occurred between Free State and pro-slave factions in the Kansas Territory from 1855 to 1859. With the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, Congress did not explicitly designate these territories as free or enslaved, leaving it to the vote of residents. The subsequent rush of opposing settlers led to guerilla warfare and other violent outbreaks, with the bloodiest attacks attributed to John Brown and his followers. Many point to John Brown's actions in Kansas and later in Harpers Ferry as contributing to the Civil War.</p> <p>When Bruce Olds published his 1995 novel <em>Raising Holy Hell</em> (a Pulitzer Prize finalist), he noted that few novels had chosen John Brown as a subject (163). However, following <em>Lidie Newton</em> and <em>Cloudsplitter</em>, Marilynne Robinson wrote <em>Gilead</em> (2004), in which <strong>[End Page 325]</strong> the pre–Civil War events in both Kansas and Iowa are foundational and include a dramatic cameo by John Brown. And in 2013 James McBride published the National Book Award winner <em>The Good Lord Bird</em>,<sup>1</sup> as choreographer Dean Moss was developing his performance piece <em>johnbrown</em>. All of these texts portray a complicated relationship between 1850s Kansas and the country that followed—with the glowering presence of a disappointed John Brown.</p> <p>What separates the Bleeding Kansas novels of McBride and Smiley from these other works is their deliberate focus on the role of gender in grounding these ideologies as well as fueling their violent eruptions. The gender-fluid performance of McBride's narrator Henry as the girl Onion is central to <em>The Good Lord Bird</em>'s complicating of rigid ideological positions. Smiley similarly highlights the fusion of ideology and gender with Lidie's initial dependence on the writing of Catharine Beecher to perform her role as an abolitionist w","PeriodicalId":23875,"journal":{"name":"Western American Literature","volume":"29 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140616178","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Cather and Opera by David McKay Powell (review)","authors":"Maria Mackas","doi":"10.1353/wal.2023.a912282","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wal.2023.a912282","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Cather and Opera</em> by David McKay Powell <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Maria Mackas </li> </ul> David McKay Powell, <em>Cather and Opera</em>. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2022. 216 pp. Hardcover, $45; e-book, $14.99 (Nook) / $19.95 (Kindle). <p><em>Cather and Opera</em> delivers much more than the title implies. Though David McKay Powell presents comprehensive analyses of the author's references to opera and of her employment of operatic devices—from her early short stories to her later novels—he also offers insightful commentary about Cather's life and work. Cather scholars need not have an interest in opera to find the book fascinating, though opera aficionados will appreciate Powell's vast knowledge of the art form's history in America and nuanced discussions of various operas and composers. (If you don't know opera, <strong>[End Page 286]</strong> keep a dictionary handy for terms like \"verismo\" and \"coloratura soprano.\")</p> <p>After a chapter providing an overview of Cather's multilayered relationship with opera, followed by a chapter on opera in the United States during Cather's time, the book's remaining six chapters chronologically explore the author's work through an opera glass lens. Cather mentioned forty-seven operas in her fiction, with operatic references in nine of her twelve novels and about half of her short stories. Powell closely examines why Cather mentions specific operas and oratorios in her fiction, and why she fashions some novels using operatic structures.</p> <p>A recurring exploration is the parallel between Cather's fiction and opera in the United States, which both grapple with \"the apparent dissonance between high culture and common folk\" (30). Powell writes that \"opera is a self-consciously emotional medium housed in a self-consciously sophisticated cultural environment. Likewise, Cather's work tends simultaneously to exploit both the primitive and the refined. Both Cather's work and opera can be critical conundrums\" (3). Powell is adept at helping the reader relate to these \"critical conundrums,\" drawing relatable parallels to make his points and make the text accessible. For example, when discussing \"The Bohemian Girl\" and the reason that Cather's title has significance relating to composer Michael William Balfe's Irish Romantic opera of the same name, he writes, \"the idea that Cather titled 'The Bohemian Girl' as a throwaway reference or as simple irony would be akin to an author today titling a novel <em>The Empire Strikes Back</em> and not expecting audiences to consider, on a page-to-page level, the reference to the film\" (69–70). Similarly, in describing Cather's only recurring character, Kitty Ayrshire, who was modeled on soprano Mary Garden, he writes, \"she is a fascinating, witty personality—Kate Hepburn might well have cited her as a character i","PeriodicalId":23875,"journal":{"name":"Western American Literature","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138525609","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Across the West and Toward the North: Norwegian and American Landscape Photography by Shannon Egan and Marthe Tolnes Fjellestad (review)","authors":"Carolina Arellanos","doi":"10.1353/wal.2023.a912284","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wal.2023.a912284","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Across the West and Toward the North: Norwegian and American Landscape Photography</em> by Shannon Egan and Marthe Tolnes Fjellestad <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Carolina Arellanos </li> </ul> Shannon Egan and Marthe Tolnes Fjellestad, <em>Across the West and Toward the North: Norwegian and American Landscape Photography</em>. Salt Lake City: U of Utah P, 2022. 229 pp. Hardcover, $69.96; paper, $34.95. <p><em>Across the West and Toward the North: Norwegian and American Landscape Photography</em> depicts the curatorial collaboration between Shannon Eagan and Marthe Tolnes Fjellestad. This book is accompanied by an exhibition featuring photographs by pioneer Norwegian photographer Knud Knudsen and Danish photographer Sophus Tromholt. Both Knudsen and Tromholt were based in Bergen, Norway, in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In this book Eagan and Fjellestad create a cross-cultural dialogue that explores the complex relationships between photography, landscape, and national identities as well as humankind's relationship to nature.</p> <p><em>Across The West and Toward the North</em> features eleven essays by contemporary art historians and curators discussing topics such as ecology, environmental history, climate change, masculinity in photography, gender bias, and industrial impacts. The essays are accompanied by photographs from the national documentary heritage of Norwegian and American landscape photographers, featuring examples of analog photographic techniques such as albumen prints, glass plate negatives, stereoscopic cards, and silver gelatin prints.</p> <p>The photographs challenge the conventional view of the sublime Norwegian and American landscapes; focusing instead on the dramatic contrast of the horizontal and vertical lines, the photographs explore the <em>fjord-meets-mountain</em> themes common in the nineteenth century, providing the viewer with a preview of the photographer's determination to overcome mental, physical, and environmental obstacles in order to document or capture the harsh landscapes they were exploring. These photographs made remote areas accessible, giving the public a window into a new world while sparking human interest, curiosity, and imagination.</p> <p>The concepts and themes discussed by the authors are relevant to our present day, subjects such as gender inequality in the photography field, climate change, tourism, and human environmental <strong>[End Page 291]</strong> impact on the land. With photography \"history\" is no longer tied to the past; photography creates a temporality. These photographs transcend time and are echoes of the past; I believe that a photograph is an entity that lives, evolves, and has potential for change. As Egan writes, \"Photography assumes an immediacy and presentness of the photographer's experiences that is passed al","PeriodicalId":23875,"journal":{"name":"Western American Literature","volume":"10 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138525612","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"2023 WLA Award Recipients","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/wal.2023.a912288","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wal.2023.a912288","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> 2023 WLA Award Recipients <!-- /html_title --></li> </ul> <p><strong>Distinguished Achievement Award</strong></p> <p><em>For an influential scholar or creative writer in western American literature</em></p> <p>Mark Trahant, Editor-at-Large for <em>Indian Country</em></p> <p><strong>Delbert & Edith Wylder Award</strong></p> <p><em>For outstanding service to the association</em></p> <p>Susan Bernardin, Oregon State University</p> <p><strong>Thomas J. Lyon Book Award</strong></p> <p><em>For most outstanding book published last year in western American literary and cultural studies</em></p> <p>Chadwick Allen, University of Washington<br/> for <em>Earthworks Rising: Mound Building in Native Literature and Arts</em><br/> (University of Minnesota Press)</p> <p>and</p> <p>Christine Bold, University of Guelph<br/> for <em>\"Vaudeville Indians\" on Global Circuits, 1880s-19030s</em> (Yale University Press)</p> <p><strong>Don D. Walker Prize</strong></p> <p><em>For best essay published in western American literary studies in 2022</em></p> <p>Timothy Foster, independent scholar, and John Beusterien,<br/> Texas Tech University for \"The Thirsty Llano Estacado:<br/> The Manuel Maés Ballad Corpus,\"<br/> <em>Great Plains Quarterly</em>, vol. 42, no. 1–2 (Winter/Spring 2022)</p> <p><strong>Creative Writing Award</strong></p> <p><em>For the best creative writing submission to the conference</em></p> <p>Mel Anderson, Idaho State University for \"Salt\" <strong>[End Page 300]</strong></p> <p><strong>WLA/Charles Redd Center K–12 Teaching Award</strong></p> <p><em>Provides teachers with the opportunity to attend and present at the WLA Conference;<br/> sponsored by the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies and the WLA</em></p> <p>Emily Ward, Rockland High School for<br/> \"Shoshone-Bannock History and Native American Policy\"</p> <p><strong>J. Golden Taylor Award</strong></p> <p><em>For best essay presented at the conference by a graduate student</em></p> <p>Patrick Vincent, University of California, Riverside<br/> for \"'<em>Mi Tierra Es Su Tierra / Mi Mundo Es Su Mundo</em>':<br/> Performance, Neoliberalism, and the West In <em>Tropic of Orange</em>\"</p> <p><strong>Dorys Crow Grover Awards</strong></p> <p><em>For outstanding papers presented at the conference by graduate<br/> students who contribute to our critical understandings of region, place,<br/> and space in western American literatures</em></p> <p>Brian Arechiga, University of Southern California<br/> for \"<em>There There</em> and Modes of Simulacra Resistance\"</p> <p>and</p> <p>Lauren White, University of Southern California for<br/> \"Little Edens: Exploring Missionary Projects and National Parks<br/> in <em>The Surrounded</em>\"</p> <p><strong>Louis Owens Awards</strong></p> <p><em>For graduate student presenters contributing exceptional scholarship<br/> and expanding diversity in the asso","PeriodicalId":23875,"journal":{"name":"Western American Literature","volume":"15 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138525607","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"58th Western Literature Association Conference","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/wal.2023.a912289","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wal.2023.a912289","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> 58th Western Literature Association Conference <!-- /html_title --></li> </ul> <br/> Click for larger view<br/> View full resolution <p><em>Hope in a Hogan</em> © Ryan Singer, 2022</p> <p></p> <p><strong>Speculative Territorializations of New West Literatures</strong></p> <p><em>Tucson, Arizona | El Conquistador Hilton Resort</em></p> <p>October 2–5, 2024</p> <p>As President of the Western Literature Association for 2023, I am thrilled to announce that the WLA Conference for next year will take place from October 2–5 in Tucson, Arizona. Situated on ancestral Tohono O'odoham lands known as Cuk-Son and nicknamed \"the Old Pueblo\" by subsequent settlers, we were able to secure the Hilton El Conquistador Resort as our conference venue. Located in the Sonoran Desert in the foothills of the spectacular Santa Catalina Mountains, this site amplifies any perceptions inspired by these layered geographic and spatial significations. Such associations speak to the meaning and status of the American West and its dynamic (re)inscription through the storytelling processes of writing, art, filmmaking, performativity, and song. As a means of synthesizing such qualities and ideas, this conference will be focused on the theme of Speculative Territorializations of New Western Literatures. The theme is offered to stimulate thought-provoking discussions and the exploration of new insights arising from the physical and mythic landscapes of the American West, including Pacific Island borderlands, reaching beyond Jean-François Lyotard's conception of teh West Coast as \"Pacific wall.\" <strong>[End Page 302]</strong></p> <p>Organized around this inclusive and expansive subject, the 2024 conference aims to inspire fresh intellectual and artistic engagement with a range of relevant texts, while extending ongoing experimentations in western literature and transcending the boundaries of literary genres and temporal contexts. This theme also seeks to provide a fertile ground for playful intellectual inquiry, reflecting the vibrant enthusiasm for diverse and forward-thinking speculative futures and artistic forms which are central to current discussions about the West and the direction of western literature, art, film, and popular culture.</p> <p>WLA 2024 President Billy J. Stratton https://www.westernlit.org/wla-conference-2024 <strong>[End Page 303]</strong></p> Copyright © 2023 Western Literature Association ... </p>","PeriodicalId":23875,"journal":{"name":"Western American Literature","volume":"21 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138525622","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}