Reading Aridity in Western American Literature

Reading Aridity in Western American Literature focuses on literature – fiction, film, non-fiction, and travel literature arid the American West. Treating "classic" authors, ignored works, and books and films by non-Americans, the volume employs ecocritical and/or new materialist approaches to provide a framework for illuminating the desert spaces.

List of contents

Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword: Desertification by Tom Lynch
Introduction: The Dry Time by Jada Ach and Gary Reger
Part I: Eco-Identities and Environmental Belonging in Arid America
Chapter 1: Imagined Deserts, Planned Communities, and Escape Pods in the American West by Amy T. Hamilton
Chapter 2: Aridity, Individualism, and Paradox in Elmer Kelton's The Time it Never Rained by Quinn Grover
Chapter 3: Desert Haunting: A Gothic Reading of Arturo Islas' The Rain God by Cordelia Barrera
Chapter 4: Imagining the Southwest in Willa Cather's Frontier Novels: Settler Colonialism in The Song of the Lark, The Professor's House, and Death Comes for the Archbishop by Zachary R. Hernandez
Part II: Desert Remains: Roads, Dams, and Discarded Pianos
Chapter 5: Desert Roads, "Construction Men," and Infrastructural Impulses in Willa Cather's The Professor's House by Jada Ach
Chapter 6: "It was the river": Indigenous Anti-Dam Literature of the Great American Desert by Holly Jean Richard and Paul Formisano
Chapte

About the author

Jada Ach is a lecturer for the leadership and integrative studies program at Arizona State University. Gary Reger is Hobart professor of classical languages at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.Jada Ach is a lecturer for the leadership and integrative studies program at Arizona State University. Gary Reger is Hobart professor of classical languages at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

Summary

Reading Aridity in Western American Literature focuses on literature - fiction, film, non-fiction, and travel literature arid the American West. Treating "classic" authors, ignored works, and books and films by non-Americans, the volume employs ecocritical and/or new materialist approaches to provide a framework for illuminating the desert spaces.

Product details

• Authors: Jada Ach
• Assisted by: Jada Ach (Editor), Ach Jada (Editor), Gary Reger (Editor), Reger Gary (Editor)
• Publisher: Rowman and Littlefield
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.12.2020
• EAN: 9781793622013
• ISBN: 978-1-79362-201-3
• No. of pages: 308
• Series: Ecocritical Theory and Practic; Ecocritical Theory and Practice
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Non-fiction book > Nature, technology > Nature: general, reference works; LITERARY CRITICISM / Subjects & Themes / Nature, NATURE / Ecosystems & Habitats / Deserts, natural history, Nature & the natural world: general interest, Literature: history & criticism, Nature and the natural world: general interest, The Earth: Natural History General, The Earth: natural history: general interest, Arid zones, deserts