First collection of critical essays by European scholars on contemporary Native North American literatures
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, representing 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.
Table of contents:
Introduction (Elvira Pulitano, Université de Lausanne)
I. 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-Bordeaux III) ; 3. Transculturality and Transdifference: The Case of Native America (Helmbrecht Breinig, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg)
II. From the Early Fiction to Recent Directions: Native-European Transactions 4. American Indian Novels of the 1930s: John Joseph Mathews’s Sundown and D’Arcy McNickle’s The Surrounded (Gaetano Prampolini, Università di Firenze); 5. Transatlantic Crossings: New Directions in the Contemporary Native American Novel (Brigitte Georgi-Findlay, Technische Universität Dresden)
III. Trauma, Memory, and Narratives of Healing: Native American Women Writers in a Transnational Context 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, UK); 8. Anamnesiac Mappings: National Histories and Transnational Healing in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead (Rebecca Tillett, University of East Anglia, Norwich)
IV. Comparative Mythologies, Transatlantic Journeys: Native American Re-inventions of Europe 9. Vizenor’s Trickster Theft: Pretexts and Paratexts of Darkness in Saint Louis’s 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, Velikotarnovski Universitet (University of Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria)); 12. Double Translation: James Welch’s The 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-Montpellier III); 14. Oklahoma International: Jim Barnes, Poetry, and the Sites Of Imagination (A. Robert Lee, Nihon University, Tokyo (formerly of the University of Kent, Canterbury))
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, representing 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.
Table of contents:
Introduction (Elvira Pulitano, Université de Lausanne)
I. 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-Bordeaux III) ; 3. Transculturality and Transdifference: The Case of Native America (Helmbrecht Breinig, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg)
II. From the Early Fiction to Recent Directions: Native-European Transactions 4. American Indian Novels of the 1930s: John Joseph Mathews’s Sundown and D’Arcy McNickle’s The Surrounded (Gaetano Prampolini, Università di Firenze); 5. Transatlantic Crossings: New Directions in the Contemporary Native American Novel (Brigitte Georgi-Findlay, Technische Universität Dresden)
III. Trauma, Memory, and Narratives of Healing: Native American Women Writers in a Transnational Context 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, UK); 8. Anamnesiac Mappings: National Histories and Transnational Healing in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead (Rebecca Tillett, University of East Anglia, Norwich)
IV. Comparative Mythologies, Transatlantic Journeys: Native American Re-inventions of Europe 9. Vizenor’s Trickster Theft: Pretexts and Paratexts of Darkness in Saint Louis’s 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, Velikotarnovski Universitet (University of Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria)); 12. Double Translation: James Welch’s The 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-Montpellier III); 14. Oklahoma International: Jim Barnes, Poetry, and the Sites Of Imagination (A. Robert Lee, Nihon University, Tokyo (formerly of the University of Kent, Canterbury))