Research in Western American Literature

Abstract

R I C H A R D H . C R A C R O F T Brigham Young University Research in Western American Literature The national trend in graduate studies in western American litera­ ture, as manifest in Dissertation Abstracts and in notices sent to me dur­ ing the past year, seems to be increasingly conservative, regional, and ethnic. And the interest in women as writers and literary figures con­ tinues. A number of dissertations completed during 1979-80 undertake further studies of such stalwarts as James Fenimore Cooper and Henry David Thoreau, the literary image of the American Indian woman, and western humor. Several regionally and ethnically focused studies deal with the Chicano, the Canadian, and the Indian as literary figure and as writer. Wright Morris has attracted several more scholars of late, as has Richard Brautigan, despite an apparent trend away from dealing with both the modern writer and the less well-known western writer, a trend which was building in the opposite direction just a few years ago. Kindly send notices of completed or in-progress M.A. or Ph.D. studies which relate to the literature, history, and culture of the American West to: Professor Richard H. Cracroft, Department of English, A-235 JKBA, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 84602. I. PH.D. DISSERTATIONS COMPLETED: Adams, Stephen James “To Set All Well Afloat” : Romantic Structures and Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (Ph.D) University of Minnesota, 1979 Western American Literature Alexander, Roberta May The Fictional Portrayal of Popular Movements (Ph.D.) University of California, San Diego, 1979 Deals, among other things, with the Mexican revolution and its aftermath. Anderson, Carol Jane Narrative Techniques in Selected Novels by Ole Edvart Rölvaag (Ph.D.) University of Arkansas, 1979 Baeza, Marcelino Abelardo The Spanish Hero in Hemingway’s Fiction (Ph.D.) Texas Tech University, 1979 Baker, Robert High The Unsettled Wilderness: Aspects of Existential Phenomenology in the Works of Henry David Thoreau (Ph.D.) The University of Texas at Austin, 1979 Bartelt, Hans Guillermo Language Transfer of Navajo and Western Apache Speakers in Writing English (Ph.D.) University of Arizona, 1980 Bendixen, Alfred Americans in Europe Before 1865: A Study of the Travel Book (Ph.D.) The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1979 Deals with works of writers from Washington Irving through Emerson, Hawthorne, and Cooper. Bradsher, Frieda Katherine Women in the Work of James Fenimore Cooper (Ph.D.) The University of Arizona, 1979 Buechler, Scott Howard Tracking Over Empty Ground: Primitivism in the Poetry of Galway Kinnell and W. S. Merwin (Ph.D.) The University of Utah, 1979 Butler, Anne Catherine M. The Tarnished Frontier: Prostitution in the Trans-Mississippi West, 1865-1890 (Ph.D.) University of Maryland, 1979 Butts, Leonard Colver Nature in the Selected Works of Four Contemporary7Novelists (Ph.D.) The University of Tennessee, 1979 Study of James Dickey, John Gardner, Richard Brautigan, and John Updike. Research 291 Carrillo, Loretta The Search for Selfhood and Order in Contemporary Chicano Fiction (Ph.D.) Michigan State University, 1979 Chavez, John Richard The Lost Land: The Chicano Image of the Southwest (Ph.D.) The University of Michigan, 1980 Daverman, Richard Lee Wright Morris: Fact and Fiction (Ph.D.) University of Michigan, 1979 Dowell, Faye Nell The Chicano Novel: A Study in Self-Definition (Ph.D.) University of Cincinnati, 1979 Dunlay, Thomas William Indian Scouts and Auxiliaries with the U.S. Army in the TransMississippi West, 1860-1890 (Ph.D.) The University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 1980 Dyrud, David Lynn Varieties of Marginality: The Treatment of the European Immi­ grant in the Middle Western Frontier Novel (Ph.D.) Purdue University, 1979 Elias, Mohamed The India of Melville and Mark Twain: A Study in Geo-Cultural Symbolism (Ph.D.) University of Kerala (India), 1978 Elliott, Karen Sue The Portrayal of the American Indian Woman in a Select Group of American Novels (Ph.D.) University of Minnesota, 1979 Examines Brown’s Edgar Huntly, Cooper’s Leatherstocking Ta.les, N.S. Stephen’s Malaeska, Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona., as well as novels by LaFarge, Manfred. Estes, David C. Thomas Bangs Thorpe’s Sketches of the Old West: A Critical Edition (Ph.D.) Duke University, 1980...