Native American Literature Research Articles

Transmission, Imitation and the Question of Early American Literary Nationalism

Transmission, Imitation and the Question of Early American Literary Nationalism. This article seeks to revalue early American literature and concurrently to clarify to what extent one can talk about American literary nationalism during the formative post-revolutionary years. Although many anthologies of American literature as well as critical studies devoted to American literary historiography have underlined the national unity of American literature as a whole, they have consistently ignored this particular period in which the transmission and imitation of English models and their alteration or transformation by American booksellers and publishers, corroborated with generic instability and the absence of central publishing hubs, fail to attest to a homogenous—and, implicitly, wholly national—development of literature. In doing so, special attention will be paid to the early American novel as a site for probing the ideals of the early Republic, for appraising its historical accomplishments, and, ultimately, for lambasting its democratic failure. At the same time, despite the misleading name of “novel” attributed to various literary genres, and its hybrid form, the early American novel was instrumental in reflecting transnational concerns and cultural exchanges that were highly suggestive of the unstable cultural identity of America at the time. Keywords: the early American Republic, transatlantic exchanges, English imitations, generic instability, common property, the early American novel

The Colonial Construction of Indian Country: Native American Literatures and Federal Indian Law. By Eric Cheyfitz

The Colonial Construction of Indian Country: Native American Literatures and Federal Indian Law. By Eric Cheyfitz

:Assembled for Use: Indigenous Compilation and the Archives of Early Native American Literatures

:<i>Assembled for Use: Indigenous Compilation and the Archives of Early Native American Literatures</i>

Native americans in the stories of Sherman Alexie

In the XX century of American Literature the themes, new characters, new directions and genres could be observed in the novels, stories and poems. In their scholarly articles literary critics analyzed the multicultural dimension in the literature of this period as the country had raised a new generation of immigrants, who were writing about their national identities in American society. Thus XX century American literature could be considered as multicultural literature that depicted the life of new generation of people who belong to various cultures but who grew up and were educated in modern American society. In its turn this multiculturalism caused the development of different nations studies that examined this aspect of literature. Examples are Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese and Mexican literary studies. Similarly, there is also Native American literature that studies creative works written by a new generation of Native American Indians. Representatives of Native American Literature raised several issues that young generation of native Americans are facing in American society. This paper deals with the stories of the Native American writer Sherman Alexie, whose works depict life, interests and problems of modern native Americans.

NATIVE AMERICAN HISTORIC MEMORY VS CATHOLIC TRADITIONAL DISCOURSE IN LOUISE ERDRICH’S NOVELS

This article analyses the Catholic interpretation of Bible-Christian imagery presupposition within Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine series. Religious discourse might be either explicit (when all the conclusions are clear) or implicit (when some shades of meanings are hidden). But this mystery is worth enshrouding with some linguistic technics. In this case, the most suitable approach would be the hermeneutical method, particularly utilizing its “hermeneutical circle” technique. This method involves breaking down the text into smaller fragments, interpreting each part individually, and then integrating these interpretations into a broader contextual understanding. Testament’s allusions are really vivid within the “Love Medicine” novel. The problem of interpreting Native American literature has been a concern for Ukrainian literary theorists since it first appeared in our country. It is worth mentioning that this kind of fiction is known in our country for less than ten years, and its interpretation is complicated not only because of the variety of positions, oppositions, and assumptions, but also due to the lack of thorough theoretical approaches to it that is caused by the lack of indigenist information. The post-millennium, the time of choices and challenges, provides an opportunity for Ukrainian scholars to expand the boundaries of their transnational research representation and include the names of indigenous authors in their research agenda.

Louise Erdrich’s The Plague of Doves - A Study Using Bakhtin’s Dialogism

The aim of this paper is to advance the theoretical aspect of Bhaktin’s Dialogism in the Native American literature with special reference to the novel The Plague of Doves. By closely examining the text, the study finds the presence of the dialogical elements in the novel. Additionally, it examines the character voices that are blending together to generate dialogic forms. Instead of showcasing their own strength, the voices allowed other voices to emerge and take on unique qualities while they persisted until the conclusion of the narrative.

Native American Female Playwrights And Their Role In Growth And Development Of Native American Drama: An Overview

The Native American Literature has its root in the form of oral storytelling tradition before Europeans arrived on Native American lands. It was then in the 18th century it developed into written literature. Early Native American writers used poetry, novel, and autobiography to express their feelings for human rights, lands, culture, sovereignty, and their community. Despite its rich legacy, Native American drama faced challenges and hardly received its recognition as a genre in later half of the twentieth century. Not only men playwrights, but also scholarly and prolific Native American women playwrights have contributed significantly to the success of Native American theatre. Their unique writing styles and contributions are equally important as male playwrights. The present paper studies Native American drama with the aim to find out the contribution of Native American women playwrights to Native American theatre and drama. The present study being interpretive and descriptive in nature hence it has applied close reading and interpretation of the primary and secondary sources.

Tuning Out the Noise: Benchmarking Entity Extraction for Digitized Native American Literature

ABSTRACTNamed Entity Recognition (NER), the automated identification and tagging of entities in text, is a popular natural language processing task, and has the power to transform restricted data into open datasets of entities for further research. This project benchmarks four NER models–Stanford NER, BookNLP, spaCy‐trf and RoBERTa–to identify the most accurate approach and generate an open‐access, gold‐standard dataset of human annotated entities. To meet a real‐world use case, we benchmark these models on a sample dataset of sentences from Native American authored literature, identifying edge cases and areas of improvement for future NER work.

Naturalistic Elements in Percival Everett’s Wounded

This article examines Percival Everett’s 2005 novel Wounded through three applications of the word “naturalistic” in order to show how the work complicates divisions between nature and man and man and animal. First, the article shows how its protagonist, John Hunt, contends with his relationship to nature as both a source of respite and as part of his livelihood as a horse trainer. Next, “naturalistic” elements of Wounded reveal how the mythic West of classic Westerns has influenced perspectives on the “real” West. Finally, the article assesses Wounded as a work of American literary naturalism, particularly in terms of the questions it inspires about free will and determinism. Together, these applications of the word “naturalistic” expose how nature acts as John’s barometer for human morality and individualism, forcing us to question whether man is truly superior over nature.

Institutional Explanations for the Persistence of Poverty on First Nations Reserves in Canada: A Review of the Native American Economic Development Literature

The institutions governing First Nations reserves in Canada are commonly cited as a key barrier to economic development. Despite these claims, few studies have empirically assessed the institutional arrangements governing reserves. Conversely, there is a much larger and more developed literature on Native American economic development and the institutions governing reservations. While there are many important differences between First Nations reserves and Native American reservations, there are several key similarities that allow for comparisons. First, the institutional arrangements governing land, specifically federal trusteeship over land, are broadly similar in both contexts. The restrictions on property, especially the prohibition on using reserve and reservation lands as collateral, also create important similarities in the availability of credit, mortgages, and other banking services. Finally, while Native American tribes generally have more sovereignty over their lands and economies, First Nations are increasingly reclaiming the right to manage their lands and economies with similar levels of autonomy. This review summarizes the Native American economic development literature in these three areas and identifies relevant considerations for First Nations in Canada. The article concludes with a discussion of future research priorities.

The Nonhuman in American Literary Naturalism ed. by Kenneth K. Brandt and Karin M. Danielsson (review)

The Nonhuman in American Literary Naturalism ed. by Kenneth K. Brandt and Karin M. Danielsson (review)

Kelly Wisecup, Assembled for Use: Indigenous Compilation and the Archives of Early Native American Literatures

Kelly Wisecup, <i>Assembled for Use: Indigenous Compilation and the Archives of Early Native American Literatures</i>

THE CHALLENGES OF TEACHING NATIVE AMERICAN LITERATURE AS PART OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE COURSE

This paper focuses on the challenges of including Native American literature in the course on nineteenth century American literature. Survey literature courses often feature canonical works and exclude minority or contrarian voices. My literature survey course includes the creation stories of four Native American tribes originating from different parts of the U.S., together with the works of contemporary Native American writers reflecting on the pre-colonisation and colonisation periods of American history. The process of teaching the course foregrounded the tensions between the dominant white settler mentality and the political and social marginality of Native Americans, making my students aware of the importance of multivalent analyses of literary and historical texts. Throughout the course, we discussed prevalent stereotypes about Native Americans in American literature. The experience of teaching this course leads me to the conclusion that it is important to discuss various marginalised voices in the survey courses on nineteenth century American literature. These texts reflect themes related to race, gender, religion, and ownership of land that go beyond literature to include social, political and historical issues, helping our students develop a better understanding of American culture.

American Literary Naturalism and The Visual

American Literary Naturalism and The Visual

The Bible in Native American Literature

For at least a century the Bible played a significant, positive role in Native American letters starting with the eighteenth-century writings of Samson Occom. A product of the Great Awakening, Occom’s engagements with the Bible resembled those of other Protestant thinkers and writers of his time, although his sermons were sometimes specifically tailored for Indian audiences and topics. After Occom, Indian authors in the nineteenth century such as Elias Boudinot and William Apess drew upon the Bible to make arguments against removal and “scientific racism.” In the twentieth century writers like Zitkala-Ša and Charles Alexander Eastman cast a critical eye on Christianity and reconsidered the virtues of traditionalism. John G. Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks (1932) was the century’s fullest literary depiction of a traditional religion, but it came at the cost of concealing Black Elk’s actual religion, Catholicism. During the 1960s and 70s oral tradition was privileged over sacred scripture, as seen in N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn (1968). While the Bible makes fewer appearances than it used to in Native American literature, it would be premature to suggest that Christianity is finished in Indian country.

:Assembled for Use: Indigenous Compilation and the Archives of Early Native American Literatures

:<i>Assembled for Use: Indigenous Compilation and the Archives of Early Native American Literatures</i>

Beyond Settler Time: Temporal Sovereignty and Indigenous Self-Determination

Beyond Settler Time: Temporal Sovereignty and Indigenous Self-Determination

The Cambridge History of Native American Literature ed. by Melanie Benson Taylor (review)

The Cambridge History of Native American Literature ed. by Melanie Benson Taylor (review)

Assembled for Use: Indigenous Compilation and the Archives of Early Native American Literatures. Kelly Wisecup

Assembled for Use: Indigenous Compilation and the Archives of Early Native American Literatures. Kelly Wisecup

The Octopus and the Other: Capitalocene Contradictions in the Symbolic Order

This article exercises a Lacanian psychoanalytic intervention into ecocriticism through examining the contradictions of the Capitalocene within Frank Norris’s 1901 novel, The Octopus. Drawing upon Jason Moore’s dialectical framework in the Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History and the Crisis of Capitalism (2016) and Philip R. Polefrone’s “The Stock Ticker in the Garden: Frank Norris, American Literary Naturalism, and Capitalocene Aesthetics” (2020), this article examines the contradictory naturalization of capitalism in nature within the novel’s depiction of the wheat and railroad industries in California through the ideology of the Capitalocene. This article then analyzes the novel’s pairing of Angéle’s sexual assault with the industrial assault of the land. Read through a psychoanalytic framework, the assaults in the novel together illuminate how the search for the other in the novel effectively obscures the psychoanalytic understanding that “there is no big Other,” or the understanding that the Capitalist symbolic order is inherently contradictory.