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Full-Text Articles in Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority
Wakara's Waterscapes: Storytelling, Cartography, And Rhetorical Sovereignty On The Shores Of The Green River, Abbey O'Brien
Wakara's Waterscapes: Storytelling, Cartography, And Rhetorical Sovereignty On The Shores Of The Green River, Abbey O'Brien
Honors Theses
In the mid nineteenth-century, Wakara, a prominent Ute leader, witnessed the invasion of his homeland by Mormon settlers and mountain-men. He met the scouts and explorers who were sent out to examine the land and waterscapes, and who drew maps along their way. It was those same maps which were eventually used as tools to justify colonial expansion all across the Utah territories, Wakara’s home. But Wakara resisted. Employing his understandings of the roles that cartography and the written word played in Mormon and settler discourse, Wakara created his own maps in order to assert his Indigenous authority over the …
The Earliest Surviving Version Of Charles Chesnutt's "Rena Walden," The Short Story That Became "The House Behind The Cedars", Dominic Yarabe
The Earliest Surviving Version Of Charles Chesnutt's "Rena Walden," The Short Story That Became "The House Behind The Cedars", Dominic Yarabe
Honors Theses
My research project presents an edited version, with an introduction, of the earliest surviving version of “Rena Walden,” the short story that ultimately became the novel The House Behind the Cedars. The novel is a passing story in which a light-skinned, mixed race girl enters white society to live life as a white woman. Interestingly, however, the short story on which the novel was based began as a fiction with no white characters whatsoever. As the manuscript of this story is often difficult to read because of hard-to-decipher handwritten revisions, I had to create my own editorial policy to …
Activism, Community And Cultural Heritage: “Communitism” In Creek Literature, Rachel Maria Cain
Activism, Community And Cultural Heritage: “Communitism” In Creek Literature, Rachel Maria Cain
Honors Theses
"Communitism" refers to literature that encourages activism by celebrating and promoting American Indian communities. This thesis investigates how the literary works, The Fus Fixico Letters (1902 – 1908) and Drowning in Fire (2004), are communitist by supporting specific political and social changes in Creek communities. Through The Fus Fixico Letters Alexander Posey promoted his progressive political convictions, including that Creeks should embrace land allotment and endorse the creation a separate state for American Indians. Drowning in Fire, by Craig Womack, takes place throughout 1904 – 1993 and relates traditional Creek stories and practices to modern life. The novel delves …
Poetry And The Post-Apocalyptic Paradox: North American Indigenous Disruptions To The Westernized Self, Joseph Benjamin Ziegler Ferber
Poetry And The Post-Apocalyptic Paradox: North American Indigenous Disruptions To The Westernized Self, Joseph Benjamin Ziegler Ferber
Honors Theses
This three-chapter project explores the work of three poets, each identifying with different North American indigenous tribes. Their work challenges western poetic conventions and notions of individualism to offer alternative worldviews and complicate mainstream oversimplifications of American Indian identity. Brandi MacDougall investigates assumptions of the Western Self represented by the "I" Perspective common in Western thought; Sherman Alexie revises the sonnet form to portray the complexity of how contemporary American Indians navigate the blending of capitalist institutions and native traditions; Kristi Leora offers readers an enlightened conception of self-hood by balancing processes of western socialization with native cosmology. Ultimately, this …