Introduction : What was Native American literature? / Melanie Benson Taylor -- Part I : Traces and removals (pre-1870s). Indigenous languages and the origins of American literary history / Sarah Rivett -- Unsettling colonial temporalities : oral traditions and indigenous literature / Gesa Mackenthun -- Early Native American literature and hemispheric studies / Ralph Bauer -- Performative cultures of early America / Laura L. Mielke -- Nineteenth-century American Indian newspapers and the construction of sovereignty / Oliver Scheiding -- Indigenous literacies in early New England / Hilary E. Wyss -- Part II : Assimilation and modernity (1879-1967). The multiplicity of early American Indian poetry / Robert Dale Parker -- Native American literature in the 1930s / Benjamin Balthaser -- Black-Indian literature under Jim Crow / Keely Byars-Nichols -- Transatlantic modernity and native performance / Kate Flint -- American Indian literature and post-revolutionary Mexico / James H. Cox -- I Kū Mau Mau (Standing Together) : native Hawaiian literary politics / Kuʻualoha Hoʻomanawanui -- Native women's writing and law / Beth H. Piatote -- Part III : Native American renaissance (post-1960s). Rethinking the Native American renaissance : texts and contexts / A. Robert Lee -- Marginally mainstream : Momaday, Silko, Erdrich, and Alexie / Nancy J. Peterson -- Indigenous lives, visual autobiographies / Hertha D. Sweet Wong -- Indigenous writing in Canada / Sophie McCall -- Reservation realities and myths in American literary history / David Treuer -- Mapping the future : indigenous feminism / Shari M. Huhndorf -- Queer sovereignty / Lisa Tatonetti -- Contemporary indigenous American poetry / Dean Rader -- Contemporary Native North American drama / Birgit Däwes -- Part IV : Visions and revisions : 21st-century prospects. Native American horror, fantasy, and speculative fiction / Eric Gary Anderson -- Charting comparative indigenous traditions / Chadwick Allen -- The global correspondence of Native American literatures / Eric Cheyfitz -- Indigenizing the internet / Deborah Madsen -- Indigenous futures beyond the sovereignty debate / Jodi A. Byrd -- The leftovers / Paul Chaat Smith -- Can you see the Indian? / Stephen Graham Jones.
Summary:
"Native American literature has always been uniquely embattled. It is marked by particularly divergent opinions about what constitutes authenticity, sovereignty, and even literature. It announces a culture beset by paradox: simultaneously primordial and postmodern; oral and inscribed; outmoded and novel; quixotic and quotidian. Above all, its texts are a site of political struggle, shifting to meet expectations both external and internal. This Cambridge History endeavors to capture and question the contested character of both Indigenous texts and the way they are evaluated. This book has a chronological structure. It delineates significant periods of literary and cultural development in four sections: "Traces & Removals" (pre-1870s); "Assimilation and Modernity" (1879-1967); "Native American Renaissance" (post-1960s); and "Visions & Revisions" (21st century). These rubrics highlight the various ways Native literatures have evolved alongside major transitions in federal policy toward the Indian, and via contact with broader cultural phenomena such as the American Civil Rights movement. There is a balance between a History of canonical authors and traditions, introducing less-studied works and themes, and foregrounding critical discussions, approaches, and controversies"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.