A History of Western American Literature

This History offers readers insight into the West as a site that sustains canonical and emerging authors alike.

Susan Kollin (Edited by)

9781107083851, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 December 2015

430 pages
23.6 x 16.1 x 2.8 cm, 0.72 kg

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.

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.

Subject Areas: Ethnic minorities & multicultural studies [JFSL1], History of the Americas [HBJK], Literary studies: general [DSB]