Read more
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
Chapter 7: The Desert as Dumping Ground in Popular Imagination by Jennifer Dawes
Part III: Envisioning the Desert from Outside the West
Chapter 8: Trinitite, Turquoise, and Rattlesnakes: Envisioning the (De)Nuclearized Desert in the Works of Leslie Marmon Silko and Kyoko Hayashi by Kyoko Matsunaga
Chapter 9: Color, Place, and Memory in Silko's Gardens in the Dunes by Celina Osuna
Chapter 10: French Travelers in the Arid Southwest by Gary Reger
Conclusion: Desert Dwelling by Ron Broglio
About the Contributors
Index
About the author
Edited by Jada Ach and Gary Reger - Contributions by Jada Ach; Cordelia Barrera; Ron Broglio; Jennifer Dawes; Paul Formisano; Quinn Grover; Amy T. Hamilton; Zachary R. Hernandez; Tom Lynch; Kyoko Matsunaga; Celina Osuna; Gary Reger and Holly Jean Richard
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.
