Transatlantic Voices

`

Transatlantic Voices

Interpretations of Native North American Literatures

Edited by Elvira Pulitano

336 pages
Index

Paperback

December 2007

978-0-8032-6034-4

$26.95 Add to Cart
eBook (PDF)
Ebook purchases delivered via Leaf e-Reader

December 2007

978-0-8032-5645-3

$26.95 Add to Cart

About the Book

Transatlantic Voices is the first collection of critical essays by European scholars on contemporary Native North American literatures. Devoted to the primary genres of Native  literature—fiction, nonfiction, drama, poetry—the essays chart the course of recent theories of Native literature, delineate the crosscurrents in the history of Native literature studies, and probe specific themes of trauma and memory as well as changing mythologies. These essays also incorporate incipient transnational and transcultural methodologies in their approach to Native North American writing.
 
Blending western critical approaches—from cultural studies to postcolonialism and trauma theory—with indigenous epistemological perspectives, the contributors to Transatlantic Voices advocate “the inescapable hybridity and intermixture of ideas” proposed by Paul Gilroy in his study of black diasporic identity. Native North American writers forcefully suggest that the study of American ethnicities in the twenty-first century can no longer be confined to the borders of the United States. Given the increasing transnational aspect of American studies, a collection such as Transatlantic Voices, presenting scholars from countries as diverse as Germany, France, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Finland, offers a timely contribution to such border crossing in scholarship and writing. 

Author Bio

Elvira Pulitano is an assistant professor of ethnic studies at California Polytechnic State University. She is the author of Toward a Native American Critical Theory (Nebraska 2003).
 
Contributors: Helmbrecht Breinig, Brigitte Georgi-Findlay, Kathryn Napier Gray, Ulla Haselstein, Hartwig Isernhagen, Yonka Krasteva, A. Robert Lee, Deborah L. Madsen, Simone Pellerin, Gaetano Prampolini, Elvira Pulitano, Bernadette Rigal-Cellard, Mark Shackleton, Paul Beekman Taylor, and Rebecca Tillett.

Table of Contents

Contents

 

Acknowledgments  

Introduction     

Elvira Pulitano, California Polytechnic State University

 

Part 1. Theoretical Crossings

1. "They Have Stories, Don't They?": Some Doubts Regarding an Overused Theorem     

Hartwig Isernhagen, Universität Basel

2. Plotting History: The Function of History in Native North American Literature   

Bernadette Rigal-Cellard, Université Michel de Montaigne<EN>Bordeaux 3

3. Transculturality and Transdifference: The Case of Native America    

Helmbrecht Breinig, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

 

Part 2. From Early Fiction to Recent Directions

4. American Indian Novels of the 1930s: John Joseph Mathews's Sundown and D'Arcy McNickle's Surrounded 

Gaetano Prampolini, Università di Firenze

5. Transatlantic Crossings: New Directions in the Contemporary Native American Novel     

Brigitte Georgi-Findlay, Technische Universität Dresden

 

Part 3. Trauma, Memory, and Narratives of Healing  

6. Of Time and Trauma: The Possibilities for Narrative in Paula Gunn Allen's The Woman Who Owned the Shadows

Deborah L. Madsen, Université de Genève

7. "Keep Wide Awake in the Eyes": Seeing Eyes in Wendy Rose's Poetry

Kathryn Napier Gray, University of Plymouth

8. Anamnesiac Mappings: National Histories and Transnational Healing in Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead   

Rebecca Tillett, University of East Anglia

 

Part 4. Comparative Mythologies, Transatlantic Journeys  

9. Vizenor's Trickster Theft: Pretexts and Paratexts of Darkness in Saint Louis Bearheart

Paul Beekman Taylor, Université de Genève

10. "June Walked over It like Water and Came Home": Cross-Cultural Symbolism in Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine and Tracks 

Mark Shackleton, University of Helsinki

11. Encounters across Time and Space: The Sacred, the Profane, and the Political in Linda Hogan's Power    

Yonka Krasteva, University of Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria

12. Double Translation: James Welch's Heartsong of Charging Elk  

Ulla Haselstein, Freie Universität Berlin

13. Clown, Indians, and Poodles: Spectacular Others in Louis Owens's I Hear the Train   

Simone Pellerin, Université Paul-Valéry<EN>Montpellier III

14. Oklahoma International: Jim Barnes, Poetry, and the Sites of Imagination 

A. Robert Lee, Nihon University, Tokyo

 

List of Contributors  

Index

Also of Interest