Deborah L. Madsen

Tracks, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, The Plague of Doves

Louise Erdrich

Winner of the 1988 American Book Award for his novel Griever: An American Monkey King in China, Gerald Vizenor is a radical, even revolutionary, voice among of contemporary Native American writers. Deborah L. Madsen offers a comprehensive overview of Vizenor's work in all literary genres, including poetry, drama, fiction, and nonfiction, as she explores the themes, images, and stylistic devices that define Vizenor's challenging and significant body of work. In his critique of corporate greed and environmental devastation, of political incompetence and self-interest, and of the modern culture of simulation, celebrity and hype, Vizenor consistently proves himself to be unafraid to prod and provoke his audience. He can also be a difficult writer for new readers, due to his use of an idiosyncratic vocabulary and the ironic, oppositional, or deconstructive stance he adopts in texts that resist easy comprehension. Madsen offers here points of entrance for scholars, students, and general readers into the complex vocabulary and vision of Vizenor's work. Madsen begins by addressing the key contexts within which Vizenor's work can be interpreted: his biography, the Anishinaabe tribal context of his thought, and the contemporary postmodern intellectual environment within which he writes. Madsen also explores her subject's neologisms, the complex lexicon he invents to convey his view of Native America. From there, she highlights Vizenor's achievements in each of the major literary genres in which he writes-- journalism, tribal history, cultural criticism, poetry, drama, and fiction--focusing on representative texts in each instance to provide detailed readings of Vizenor's distinctive style and language.

Understanding Gerald Vizenor

This study of all the major narrative works of Thomas Pynchon (V, The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, Vineland) and his early fiction is an attempt to describe the narrative mechanisms that produce the uncertainty and ambiguity noted by all of Pynchon's critics. These critics have analyzed the dynamic uncertainties of Pynchon's texts in terms of cybernetics, thermodynamics, Rilke, Weber, Jung - all terms that are offered by the fiction itself. The generic concept of postmodernist allegory allows the critic to speak from a position outside the text and allows us to see that ambiguity and indeterminancy are the effects produced by the way in which the text is constructed.

The Postmodernist Allegories of Thomas Pynchon

The Routledge Companion to Native American Literature engages the multiple scenes of tension -- historical, political, cultural, and aesthetic -- that constitutes a problematic legacy in terms of community identity, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, language, and sovereignty in the study of Native American literature. This important and timely addition to the field provides context for issues that enter into Native American literary texts through allusions, references, and language use. The volume presents over forty essays by leading and emerging international scholars and analyses: regional, cultural, racial and sexual identities in Native American literature key historical moments from the earliest period of colonial contact to the present worldviews in relation to issues such as health, spirituality, animals, and physical environments traditions of cultural creation that are key to understanding the styles, allusions, and language of Native American Literature the impact of differing literary forms of Native American literature. This collection provides a map of the critical issues central to the discipline, as well as uncovering new perspectives and new directions for the development of the field. It supports academic study and also assists general readers who require a comprehensive yet manageable introduction to the contexts essential to approaching Native American Literature. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the past, present and future of this literary culture. Contributors: Joseph Bauerkemper, Susan Bernardin, Susan Berry Brill de Ramírez, Kirby Brown, David J. Carlson, Cari M. Carpenter, Eric Cheyfitz, Tova Cooper, Alicia Cox, Birgit Däwes, Janet Fiskio, Earl E. Fitz, John Gamber, Kathryn N. Gray, Sarah Henzi, Susannah Hopson, Hsinya Huang, Brian K. Hudson, Bruce E. Johansen, Judit Ágnes Kádár, Amelia V. Katanski, Susan Kollin, Chris LaLonde, A. Robert Lee, Iping Liang, Drew Lopenzina, Brandy Nālani McDougall, Deborah Madsen, Diveena Seshetta Marcus, Sabine N. Meyer, Carol Miller, David L. Moore, Birgit Brander Rasmussen, Mark Rifkin, Kenneth M. Roemer, Oliver Scheiding, Lee Schweninger, Stephanie A. Sellers, Kathryn W. Shanley, Leah Sneider, David Stirrup, Theodore C. Van Alst, Jr., Tammy Wahpeconiah

The Routledge Companion to Native American Literature

This is the first bibliography of Postmodernism to take account of work published in all subject areas and in all languages. Deborah Madsen has identified a new first occurrence of the term in 1926, preceding by more than twenty years the first occurence documented by the Oxford English Dictionary. In a chronological listing, books, articles, notes, letters and working papers on Postmodernism are described with full bibliographical details. Reviews of major books are documented and full contents listings are given for special issues of journals devoted to Postmodernism. An appendix includes books on Postmodernism announced for publication in 1995. This bibliography brings together in one place all secondary material published on Postmodernism. All disciplines are included, from anthropology to zoology: architecture, cultural studies, dance, drama, feminism, fiction, geography, history, legal studies, literary theory, mathematics, medicine, music, pedagogical theory, philosophy, photography and film, poetry, politics, religion, sociology, the visual and plastic arts, and others. The bibliography also documents items in a range of languages other than English: Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Slovanian, Spanish, and the Scandinavian languages. Access to the information contained in the bibliography is made easy with a comprehensive index providing guidance according to author, subject, language, and key words. Postmodernism: A Bibliography, 1926-1994 is an essential reference text for anyone working in the area of contemporary culture studies.

A Bibliography, 1926-1994

Postmodernism

The first book devoted exclusively to the poetry and literary aesthetics of one of Native America's most accomplished writers, this collection of essays brings together detailed critical analyses of single texts and individual poetry collections from diverse theoretical perspectives, along with comparative discussions of Vizenor's related works. Contributors discuss Vizenor's philosophy of poetic expression, his innovations in diverse poetic genres, and the dynamic interrelationships between Vizenor's poetry and his prose writings. Throughout his poetic career Vizenor has returned to common tropes, themes, and structures. Indeed, it is difficult to distinguish clearly his work in poetry from his prose, fiction, and drama. The essays gathered in this collection offer powerful evidence of the continuing influence of Anishinaabe dream songs and the haiku form in Vizenor's novels, stories, and theoretical essays; this influence is most obvious at the level of grammatical structure and imagistic composition but can also be discerned in terms of themes and issues to which Vizenor continues to return.

The Poetry and Poetics of Gerald Vizenor

Exploring the work of six notable authors, this text reveals characteristic themes, images and stylistic devices that make contemporary Chicana writing a vibrant and innovative part of a burgeoning Latina creativity.

Understanding Contemporary Chicana Literature

A close-up look at America's perceived historical ideal

American Exceptionalism

Andrea Riemenschnitter

Chinese migrant communities have reinvented their histories in many contexts, but the process of globalization has accelerated and diversified this phenomenon. Their fluid identities, innovative modernities, and generative talents in overcoming prejudice and multiple dislocations offer powerful examples of creative resistance to placebound traditions and nationalist histories. As the velocity of exchange in global media and commerce steadily increases, emergent and dynamic diasporas are increasingly influential in transnational discourses. This volume engages cultural representations of the subjectivities and loyalties of Chinese migrant communities, including analyses of aesthetic texts, as well as theoretical approaches in cultural studies. The book situates diasporic agency as an historical phenomenon with far-reaching political and social implications for both home and host societies and as a major site of contemporary cultural developments. By assembling a variety of regional, temporal, and disciplinary perspectives, it interrogates current notions of the diasporic subject, raising questions about respective ideological roots and cultural repositories as well as extensions and transgressions of new aesthetic vocabularies. Contributors include Roland Altenburger, Pheng Cheah, Prasenjit Duara, Kathrin Ensinger, Ping-kwan Leung, Helen F. Siu, Tamara S. Wagner, Mary Shuk-han Wong, Sau-ling C. Wong and Nicolas Zufferey.

Cultural Archives of Chinese Transnationalism

Diasporic Histories

An accessible account of the varieties of feminist thought within the context of the key American texts including Kate Chopin, Alice Walker and Ann Beattie.

Feminist Theory and Literary Practice

The first book devoted exclusively to the poetry and literary aesthetics of one of Native America’s most accomplished writers, this collection of essays brings together detailed critical analyses of single texts and individual poetry collections from diverse theoretical perspectives, along with comparative discussions of Vizenor’s related works. Contributors discuss Vizenor’s philosophy of poetic expression, his innovations in diverse poetic genres, and the dynamic interrelationships between Vizenor’s poetry and his prose writings. Throughout his poetic career Vizenor has returned to common tropes, themes, and structures. Indeed, it is difficult to distinguish clearly his work in poetry from his prose, fiction, and drama. The essays gathered in this collection offer powerful evidence of the continuing influence of Anishinaabe dream songs and the haiku form in Vizenor’s novels, stories, and theoretical essays; this influence is most obvious at the level of grammatical structure and imagistic composition but can also be discerned in terms of themes and issues to which Vizenor continues to return.

The book explores what characterises a a good lifea and how this idea has been affected by globalisation and neoliberalism."

Expanding the Canon

Post-Colonial Literatures

Presents career biographies and criticism of Asian American writers from the late 19th century up to the current time. Many works focus on the experience of Asians living in the United States.

Asian American Writers

A survey of current critical perspectives on how North American indigenous peoples are viewed and represented transnationally.

Transnational Perspectives on Native American Literary Studies

Native Authenticity

The Routledge Companion to Native American Literature engages the multiple scenes of tension — historical, political, cultural, and aesthetic — that constitutes a problematic legacy in terms of community identity, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, language, and sovereignty in the study of Native American literature. This important and timely addition to the field provides context for issues that enter into Native American literary texts through allusions, references, and language use. The volume presents over forty essays by leading and emerging international scholars and analyses: regional, cultural, racial and sexual identities in Native American literature key historical moments from the earliest period of colonial contact to the present worldviews in relation to issues such as health, spirituality, animals, and physical environments traditions of cultural creation that are key to understanding the styles, allusions, and language of Native American Literature the impact of differing literary forms of Native American literature. This collection provides a map of the critical issues central to the discipline, as well as uncovering new perspectives and new directions for the development of the field. It supports academic study and also assists general readers who require a comprehensive yet manageable introduction to the contexts essential to approaching Native American Literature. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the past, present and future of this literary culture. Contributors: Joseph Bauerkemper, Susan Bernardin, Susan Berry Brill de Ramírez, Kirby Brown, David J. Carlson, Cari M. Carpenter, Eric Cheyfitz, Tova Cooper, Alicia Cox, Birgit Däwes, Janet Fiskio, Earl E. Fitz, John Gamber, Kathryn N. Gray, Sarah Henzi, Susannah Hopson, Hsinya Huang, Brian K. Hudson, Bruce E. Johansen, Judit Ágnes Kádár, Amelia V. Katanski, Susan Kollin, Chris LaLonde, A. Robert Lee, Iping Liang, Drew Lopenzina, Brandy Nālani McDougall, Deborah Madsen, Diveena Seshetta Marcus, Sabine N. Meyer, Carol Miller, David L. Moore, Birgit Brander Rasmussen, Mark Rifkin, Kenneth M. Roemer, Oliver Scheiding, Lee Schweninger, Stephanie A. Sellers, Kathryn W. Shanley, Leah Sneider, David Stirrup, Theodore C. Van Alst, Jr., Tammy Wahpeconiah

Deborah L. Madsen

Books

Your next favorite book is out there