Dissertations / Theses: 'Native American Literatures'

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Craddock, Tina. "Intergenerational trauma in African and Native American literatures." Thesis, East Carolina University, 2014. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=1558803.

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The enslavement and persecution of African and Native peoples has been occurring in the U.S. since the 1600s. There have been justifications, explanations and excuses offered as to why one race feels superior over another. Slavery, according to the Abolition Project, refers to "a condition in which individuals are owned by others, who control where they live and at what they work" (e2bn.org, 2009). Dr. Maria Yellow Horse Braveheart researched the concept of historical trauma as it relates to American Indians, whereby she found that trauma due to unresolved grief, disenfranchised grief, and unresolved internalized oppression could continue to manifest itself through many generations. This thesis will examine the intergenerational effects of historical trauma as they are depicted in selected African and Native bildungsromans. These specific works were chosen because they allow me to compare and contrast how subsequent generations of these two cultures were still being directly affected by colonialism, especially as it pertains to the loss of their identities. It also allows me to reflect on how each of the main characters, all on the cusp of adulthood, make choices for their respective futures based on events that occurred long before they were born.

Chapters One and Two highlight specific works from African American authors Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. Walker's novel, The Color Purple, depicts the life of an African American girl in the rural South of the 1930s. In this work I will examine how the loss of the male traditional role of provider and protector has affected the family dynamics and led to the male assuming the role of oppressor. In Morrison's Song of Solomon, I will examine the importance of identity and how one man's flight from slavery has affected the family structure of four subsequent generations. Both of the protagonists, Celie and Milkman, were born free, and yet still feel enslaved, just as their ancestors were, by their lack of choices as well as their quest for purpose and personal justice.

Chapters Three and Four will discuss literary works by Native American authors Louise Erdrich and Sherman Alexie, both vocal advocates of educating the lost generations—those who were forbidden to learn of and practice their language or tribal rituals due to colonialism—as well as Anglo-Americans on the importance of preserving the culture and heritage of their people. In Erdrich's The Round House, young Joe Coutts' family is tragically ripped apart by a physically violent attack on his mother. In an attempt to discover the truth of what really happened and who harmed her, Joe embarks on a journey in which borders, both literal and figurative, jurisdiction, and justice will be defined. The choices made by Joe, the adolescent, will have a direct impact on the evolution of Joe, the adult. In Alexie's Flight, Zits is a fifteen year old boy who seemingly belongs nowhere and to no one. It is this lack of identity that initially leads him down a path of destruction and on a magical journey of self-discovery where he will learn that he has within himself the ability to overcome his own personal tragedies, define who he is, and find happiness. The final chapter introduces the concept of restorative justice, a legal term that emphasizes repairing the harm done to crime victims through a process of negotiation, mediation, victim empowerment and reparations. I will also briefly discuss how both African and Native people are reclaiming their cultural identities through naming, ceremony, and traditions. I will briefly define a new concept developed by Dr. Joy Deruy Leary, referred to as post traumatic slave syndrome, and will show that like historical response trauma, its symptoms can be traced back generations to the enslavement of African people. I will argue that justice, identity and the lack of choices are major themes identified in each of these works which tie them all together. I will also argue that these themes have a direct correlation to the signs and symptoms of both Historical Response Trauma and Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome as defined by Dr. Braveheart and Dr. Leary, and how ultimately each of these protagonists used some means of restorative justice to stop the cycle of trauma and begin the process of healing

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Idini, Antonio Giovanni 1958. "Detecting colonialism: Detective fiction in Native American and Sardinian literatures." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/282702.

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This dissertation compares Native American and Sardinian literatures, focussing on literary renditions of detective stories, a recent development which has occurred in both literatures. The study is based on Procedura (1988), and Il terzo suono (1995), by Sardinian author Salvatore Mannuzzu; The Sharpest Sight (1992), Bone Game (1994), and Nightland (1996) by Choctaw-Cherokee-Irish writer Louis Owens. In both literatures the use of detective fiction embodies the authors' commentary regarding the discourse on colonization. Recurrent thematic features are the concern with history, notably the history of domination and the processes that have led to the present post-colonial condition. The drive towards solving the crime symbolizes and comments upon the necessity of addressing the history of colonization, past and present, both of the land and its people. All the novels included in this study elaborate the basic features of the genre in innovative ways that offer significant commentaries on the condition of these two colonized peoples. The truth at the end of the narration is broken down to a multiplicity of competing narratives. The dispossession and exploitation of ancestral land are textually structured as crimes which further parallel and comment upon the murder of human beings. Also, the characters of the detectives are pivotal for the embodiment of a critique of the classic anthropological model. The gathering of data in order to offer a 'scientific' version of the truth is an endeavor shared by criminal investigators as well as anthropologists, ethnologists and archaeologists. Since classic detective fiction and modern science developed simultaneously around the middle of nineteenth century, it is not coincidental that post-colonial authors of detective fiction feel the necessity to address the self-appointed superiority of so-called scientific discourse. As both cultures have been commodified as objects to be studied by external social scientists, Mannuzzu's and Owens's refusal to depict a univocal solution is also indicative of the clash between definitions elaborated by outsiders versus forms of traditional knowledge within the cultural group.

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Hamilton, Amy T. "Peregrinations: Walking the Story, Writing the Path in Euro-American, Native American, and Chicano/Chicana Literatures." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/195967.

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This dissertation traces the act of walking as both metaphor and physical journey through the American landscape in American texts. Drawing together texts from different time periods, genres, and cultural contexts, I contend that walking is a central trope in American literature. Textual representations of traversing the land provoke transformation of the self recording the walk and the landscape in the imagination of the walker. The experience of walking across and through the heavily storied American land challenges the walker to reconcile lived experience with prior expectations.While many critics have noted the preponderance of travel stories in American literature, they tend to center their studies on the journeys of Euro-American men and less often Euro-American women, and approach walking solely as metaphor. The symbolic power of a figure walking across the American land has rightfully interested critics looking at travel across the continent; however, this focus tends to obscure the fact that walking, after all, is not only a literary trope - it has real, physical dimensions as well.Walking in the American land is more than the forward movement of civilization, and it is more than the experience of wilderness and wildness. In many ways, walking defines the American ideals of space, place, and freedom. In this context, this dissertation investigates the connections between walking, American literature, and the natural world: What is it about walking that seems to allow American writers to experience the land in a way that horses, cars, trains, and planes prevent? What about the land and the self is revealed at three miles an hour? In the texts I examine, walking provides a connection to the natural world, the sacred, and individual and cultural identity. I trace American responses to nature and cultural identity through the model of walking - the rhythm of footsteps, the pain of blisters and calluses, and the silence of moving through the wilderness on foot.

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Gemein, Mascha N. "“Seeds Must Be Among the Greatest Travelers of All”: Native American Literatures Planting the Seeds for a Cosmopolitical Environmental Justice Discourse." OXFORD UNIV PRESS, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/622098.

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Wilkes, Nicole. "Standing in the Center of the World: The Ethical Intentionality of Autoethnography." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2009. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/1874.

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Emmanuel Levinas's philosophy of ipseity and alterity has permeated Western thought for more than forty years. In the social sciences and the humanities, the recognition of the Other and focus on difference, alterity, has influenced the way we ethically approach peoples and arts from different cultures. Because focus on the ego, ipseity, limits our ethical obligations, focusing on the Other does, according to Levinas, bring us closer to an ethical life. Furthermore, the self maintains responsibility for the Other and must work within Levinas's ethical system to become truly responsible. Therefore, the interaction between self and Other is Levinas's principal concern as we move toward the New Humanism. The traditional Western autobiography has been centered in the self, the ego, which may prevent the ethical interaction on the part of the writer because the writer often portrays himself or herself as exemplary or unique rather than as an individual within a culture who is responsible for others. Nevertheless, life writing has expanded as writers strive to represent themselves and their cultures responsibly. One form that has emerged is the literary autoethnography, a memoir that considers ancestry, culture, history, and spiritual inheritance amidst personal reflection. In particular, Native American conceptions of the self within story have inspired conventions of literary autoethnography. This project explores the way Native American worldviews have influenced the autoethnography by looking at four Native American authors: Janet Campbell Hale, N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Carter Revard. Through research, family stories, interviews, and returns to ancestral spaces, autoethnographers can bring themselves and their readers closer to cultural consciousness. By investigating standards in autoethnographic works, this project will illustrate the ethical intentionality of autoethnography.

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Chung, Tzu-I. "American legends: Nation, nature, natives and others, 1608 to 2001." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/290058.

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In this dissertation, I explore the complex layers of the dynamic American cultures that inform personal experiences, shape national identities, and impinge upon the global order. Situating this project within recent explorations of cultural globalization within American Studies, Cultural Studies, and the Environmental Justice Movement, I examine cultural narratives united by one colonial trope: the colonial conquest of natural resources through the subjugation of feminine body and feminized land (noble savage), and the retreat of the primitive ignoble savage in the face of civilization and progress. These narratives include Henry Adams and Everett Emerson's opposing representations of Captain John Smith, the articulation of America as 'nature's nation' in Thomas Cole's art and the PBS program Frontier House, the Broadway show Miss Saigon, and the now infamous Wen Ho Lee case. These disparate narratives, at the intersection of discourses of nation, nature, race, and gender, accumulate a collective force even in their separate moments. Adams and Emerson demonstrate a linear view of American history that upholds progress in terms of industrialization and expansionism at the cost of nature, and racialized and gendered others. Cole and Frontier House romanticize subjugation in terms of nature, race and gender, which is construed as an inevitable and necessary step towards progress. In the Broadway musical Miss Saigon and media and political representations of the Wen Ho Lee case, such progress contributes to an American identity that plays a leading role within the current the globalized order. The ancient colonial trope remains alive today through these narratives, I argue, because the apparatuses of global capitalist development and environmentalism have created new global regimes of governmentality that continue, under new guise, the structures and relationships under colonialism. These narratives are part of a cultural process productive of a new 'common sense,' an understanding that helps people grasp cultural representations, solve social conflicts, and negotiate political realities. As such, cultural texts are integral aspects of history and politics.

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Salles, Juliana Almeida. "Empowering natives through autobiographical writing: Lee Maracles Bobbi Lee indian rebel and Leslie Marmon Silkos The turquoise ledge: a memoir." Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 2014. http://www.bdtd.uerj.br/tde_busca/arquivo.php?codArquivo=7043.

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Esta dissertação trata de duas obras autobiográficas escritas por autoras nativas que ganharam reconhecimento na década de 70: Bobbi Lee Indian Rebel (1975), da nativo-canadense Lee Maracle, e The Turquoise Ledge: a Memoir (2010), da nativo-americana Leslie Marmon Silko. A importância destas autoras para a Renascença Nativo-Americana/Canadense é inegável, e cada uma delas contribuiu fazendo uso de estratégias diferentes: enquanto Maracle começou sua carreira com Bobbi Lee Indian Rebel, de cunho autobiográfico, Silko esperou mais de trinta anos para publicar The Turquoise Ledge. A problematização de se ver estas obras pelo olhar estritamente ocidental, ou estritamente nativo, é discutida, assim como o aparentemente inevitável tom político dessas narrativas. Ainda que mais de três décadas separem a publicação das obras selecionadas, perguntas como: Estas obras podem ser consideradas literatura?, Elas têm como principal propósito engrandecer feitos pessoais das autoras?, ou Como essas narrativas contribuem para o empoderamento do povo Nativo? podem nunca chegar a serem respondidas, mas, de fato, incitaram a escrita desta dissertação e nortearam nossa análise
This dissertation brings to the fore two autobiographical works by Native women authors who first gained recognition in the 1970s: Bobbi Lee Indian Rebel (1975), by Native-Canadian Lee Maracle and The Turquoise Ledge: a Memoir (2010), by Native-American Leslie Marmon Silko. These womens undeniable importance to the Native American/Canadian Renaissance is clear, and each of these authors decided to contribute to Native literature using different strategies: while Maracle started her career with Bobbi Lee Indian Rebel, an autobiographical work, Silko waited over thirty years to publish her The Turquoise Ledge. The problematization of seeing either works strictly through Western or strictly through Native perspectives is also addressed here, along with the apparently inevitable political tone present in both narratives. Despite the fact that the two selected works have been written over three decades apart, questions such as: Can these works be considered literature?, Do they have as main purpose to highlight the authors personal accomplishments? or How do they work to empower the Native people? may never be answered, but they did incite the writing of this dissertation and guided our analysis

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Lindström, Cecilia. "Prejudice Within Native American Communities : - a literary study of the prejudice expressed in Love Medicine and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian." Thesis, Högskolan i Gävle, Engelska, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-23858.

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The Native American characters in Love Medicine and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian experience prejudice from other Native Americans and suffer from internalized norms and values. This study examines whether or not the prejudice the fictional characters in Love Medicine and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indianexperience and express as Native Americans unite them as a community or not. It also investigateshow they view white society andif the Native American characters have prejudice against the members of their own tribal community. The analysis is partially based on postcolonial theory and focuses on terms such as internalisation, acculturation and prejudice. The thesis found that the communitiesare united on the premises that they conform to the Native American norms but any deviation from these norms has the potential to divide them.

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Davis, Randall Craig. "Firewater Myths : alcohol and portrayals of Native Americans in American literature /." The Ohio State University, 1991. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487687959968421.

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Moore, David L. "Native knowing : the politics of epistemology in American and Native American literature /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9376.

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Hay, Jody L. "Native American women in children's literature." Thesis, The University of Arizona, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/291972.

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This thesis focuses on the roles of Native women in children's literature. The study explores the works of five Native women writers in the United States that have successfully published adult literature and at least one children's book since 1990. The purpose of the research is to gain a better understanding of what these writers reveal about the roles of Native women in their literature for children. The data was collected using content analysis on the books and a questionnaire to determine (1) what roles the Native writers convey in their children's literature; and (2) what these women are writing in this field and their perspectives on the writing process. The findings of this research discuss these writers' portrayals of the complexity of Native women's roles as well as offer insight into their craft.

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Dakin, Alana E. "Indigenous Continuance Through Homeland: An Analysis of Palestinian and Native American Literature." Ohio University Honors Tutorial College / OhioLINK, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ouhonors1340304236.

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Taylor, Alan Creston. "Paper nation: American literature and the surveying of North America." Thesis, Boston University, 2012. https://hdl.handle.net/2144/12649.

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Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you.
This dissertation studies the largely unexamined role of land surveying in the emergence and growth of the United States and its literature. In the Introduction I argue that surveying was an indispensable technology of American expansion that provided the means through which new territories were incorporated and assimilated within the burgeoning nation. The national survey further created a vast archive of images and descriptions that diffused into the furthest reaches of American thought, social life, and representational practice, forming a powerful conceptual framework for "viewing" and imagining the nation and its seemingly inevitable future. American fiction during this period both served and resisted the survey's ideological program by providing-and also refuting-narratives of place, identity, and sovereignty necessary to authorize control of the western lands. Chapter One argues that Charles Brockden Brown's Edgar Huntly (1799) dramatizes the largely forgotten history of the nation's first territorial expansion into the Northwest Territory during the 1780s, illustrating how the United States used the promise of private property in land to bring an end to frontier violence and impose fundamental changes in frontier social relations that ultimately led to US control of the region. Chapter Two focuses on Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona (1884) which depicts the role of the national survey in the reterritorialization of Alta California after 1848. The basic difficulty that plagued this contact zone involved the incorporation of a mosaic of spaces shaped by Spanish, Mexican, and Indian cultural practice and tradition into the social, legal, and economic structures of the United States-a process that might be described as the survey's "translation" of the idiomatic and informal spaces of Alta California into the uniform landscape of the nation. Chapter Three considers Louise Erdrich's Tracks (1988) and the instrumental role of the survey in a misguided national effort during the 1870s to "civilize" native peoples by introducing them to private property. Tracks exposes how the attempt to assimilate native peoples to the cultural and economic structures of the white communities surrounding them was accomplished through a profound, and destructive, revision of native space-the surveying of collectively held Indian lands into privately held allotments.

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Donovan, Kathleen McNerney. "Coming to voice: Native American literature and feminist theory." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/186769.

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This dissertation argues that numerous parallels exist between Native American literature, especially that by women, and contemporary feminist literary and cultural theories, as both seek to undermine the hierarchy of voice: who can speak? what can be said? when? how? under what conditions? After the ideas find voice, what action is permitted to women? All of these factors influence what African American cultural theorist bell hooks terms the revolutionary gesture of "coming to voice." These essays explore the ways Native American women have voiced their lives through the oral tradition and through writing. For Native American women of mixed blood, the crucial search for identity and voice must frequently be conducted in the language of the colonizer, English, and in concert with a concern for community and landscape. Among the topics addressed in the study are (1) the negotiation of identity of those who must act in more than one culture; (2) ethnocentrism in ethnographic reports of tribal women's lives; (3) misogyny in a "canonical" Native American text; (4) the ethics of intercultural literary collaboration; (5) commonality in inter-cultural texts; and (6) transformation through rejection of Western privileging of opposition, polarity, and hierarchy.

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Holm, Sharon Lee. "Writing native sovereignty : the political aesthetic in contemporary Native American literature." Thesis, Birkbeck (University of London), 2007. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.444197.

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Gorelova, Olena. "Postmodernism, Native American literature and issues of sovereignty." Thesis, Montana State University, 2009. http://etd.lib.montana.edu/etd/2009/gorelova/GorelovaO0509.pdf.

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Criticism of Native American literature is barely two centuries old, while criticism of Western literature boasts a history that is quite a bit longer. The questions on how to read and interpret tribal narrative and modern American Indian fiction are still urgent topics that trigger numerous debates among literary scholars. What theories to employ and what approaches to use to dispel misinterpretations of the literature are still matters open to suggestion. Postmodernism, the new world trend, has influenced all spheres of life, not excluding literature. Although it does seem to better account for American Indian voices as it shifts attention to local narratives and re-evaluation of history, the issue of whether it is applicable and favorable to Native American literature and its cause is a debatable one. Postmodern theory claims to liberate the suppressed voices including those of Native Americans, but at the same time presents the danger of limiting Native American literature to another set of frames while denying it its purpose, i.e. achievement of the establishment of Native American national literature. Many American Indian scholars insist that American Indian literature should not be interpreted using mainstream approaches, such as postmodernism, since they have already done enough damage, but implementing American Indian philosophies instead, such as nationalism. It also seems premature to apply postmodern theory since it deconstructs history and identity, which are still to be constructed in Native American literature. Tribal literature and tribal realities are closely connected and, therefore, the fight for Native American literature and how to interpret it appears to be a part of a bigger fight, the one for sovereignty, both national and intellectual. The "post" of postmodernism, as well as the "post" of post-colonialism, might simply not be present for Native American literature yet and, therefore, theories offered by nationalism can at the given moment be more promising to American Indian literature and its purposes.

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Suzuki-Martinez, Sharon S. 1963. "Tribal Selves: Subversive Identity in Asian American and Native American Literature." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/565575.

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Knight, Tatiana E. "A Critique of the Representation of Violence in American Literature:." FIU Digital Commons, 2012. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/751.

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The purpose of this thesis was to draw new insights on Thomas Berger’s classic American novel, Little Big Man, and his representation of fictional violence that is a substantial aspect of any text on the Indian Wars and “Custer’s Last Stand”. History’s major world wars led to shifts in the political climate and a noted change in the way that violence was represented in the arts. Historical, fictional, and cinematic treatments of “Custer’s Last Stand” and violence were each considered in relation to the text. Berger's version of the famed story is a revision of history that shows the protagonist as a dual-member of two violent societies. The thesis concluded that Berger’s updated American legends and unique “white renegade” character led to a representation of violence that spoke to the current state of affairs in 1964 when the world was becoming much more hostile and chaotic place.

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Stigter, Shelley, and University of Lethbridge Faculty of Arts and Science. "Double-voice and double-consciousness in Native American literature." Thesis, Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Faculty of Arts and Sciencec, 2005, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10133/288.

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This thesis follows the interaction of "double-voicing" and "double-consciousness" in Native American literary history. It begins with surviving records from the time of colonial contact and ends with works by Leslie Marmon Silko and Thomas King, two contemporary authors of the Native American Literary Renaissance. "Double-voicing" is a common feature found in many works preserved by early anthropologists from various Native American oral traditions. However, after colonial contact this feature largely disappears from literary works written by Native American authors, when it is replaced by the societal condition "double-consciousness." With the revitalization of cultural knowledge in the mid-twentieth-century, Native authors also revitalize their rhetorical techniques in their writing and the "double-voice" feature reemerges coupled with a bicultural awareness that is carried over from "double-consciousness."
vi, 98 leaves ; 29 cm.

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Whitehouse, Paul Charles. "Violence and frontier in twentieth century Native American literature." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2016. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/85416/.

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The central argument of my work is that authors Leslie Marmon Silko, Louis Owens, and Gerald Vizenor, working in the latter half of the twentieth century, use violence as a literary device (literary violence) for exposing and critiquing modes of systemic violence inherent in the formative originary myths of dominant US culture, specifically the mythic frontier and West. I argue that they engage with questions arising out of the systemic and normative violence required to sustain exceptionalist and supremacist Euramerican myth, which in turn sanitise the unspeakable violence of settler colonialism. This sanitising effect produces a form of transcendent violence, so called because the violence it describes is deemed to be justified in accordance with dominant ideology. In addressing this, Silko rewrites the mythic legacies of frontier and the West, rearticulating the unspeakable violence of conquest and domination, resulting in an anti-Western, pre-apocalyptic vision that turns away from European modernity and late twentieth century capitalism, looking instead to an Indigenous worldview. Owens similarly proposes an alternative reading of frontier where binaries of racial and cultural difference become malleable and diffuse, producing unexpected breaks with established ideology and narratives of dominance. The unseen systemic violence of the provincial town, in many ways the American societal idyll in microcosm, emerges during key confrontations between Native and non-Native characters in the liminal spaces and boundaries of the provincial town. Bringing these different threads together, Vizenor critiques systemic and institutionalised violence in his fiction and non-fiction work. His breakthrough novel Darkness in Saint Louis Bearheart shares key characteristics with the work of Silko and Owens in this regard. Transgressing borders of taste, binaries of simulated Indianness, and notions of Euramerican cultural dominance, Vizenor’s mocking laugh destabilises the notion of completed conquest and closed frontiers as the final word on Euramerican supremacy.

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Kachur, Curtis. "The Freedom and Privacy of an Indian Boarding School's Sports Field and Student Athletes Resistance to Assimilation." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1510234437881951.

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Lumsden, Paul. "The bear in selected American, Canadian, and Native literature, a pedagogical symbol linking humanity and nature." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/nq23022.pdf.

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Udel, Lisa J. "REVISING STRATEGIES THE LITERATURE AND POLITICS OF NATIVE WOMEN'S ACTIVISM." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2001. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin990625725.

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Charles-Galley, Marie Line J. "A Glimpse of African Identity Through the Lens of Togolese Literature." Thesis, University of Missouri - Columbia, 2019. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=13877137.

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Togo, this small West African nation, is still relative unknown, even in today's jet set world. The Western world is only now discovering the numerous advances Togo has made in it social and economic policies, but most of all in its political conjectures. After its Independence on April 27, 1960, Togo had barely begun its journey to democracy when the dictatorship of Gnassingbe Eyadema became the yoke of the people for over thirty-one years, on April 14th, 1967. The consequences of the stranglehold exercised by Gnassingbe was to shut the nation's cultural growth and cause the people to close in onto themselves and build a protective barrier between themselves and the rest of the world.

Yet, Togo had great beginnings. It was one of the pioneers of Sub-Saharan literature, publishing in 1929 one of the first true African novels still read today. In 1929, native son Felix Couchoro, was among the first Sub-Saharan authors to write a novel which gave agency to an African protagonist in a story set in Africa, with an African-themed plot, and with a conclusion that aimed at rethinking African society. Couchoro was the first to look deeply into his culture and the social identity of his nation. He brought forth suggestions that would help in Togo's growth and insure its successful battle for Independence.

In doing so, however, Couchoro also created great controversy around a subject which continues to plague not only Togelese people, but all Africans who feel pulled in two directions: preserving their authentic traditional customs while taking an active part in the modern world, through economic improvements as well as technological advances. In this dissertation, I will first study Couchoro's flagship novel which was the starting point of this quest for a modern identity, then analyze how subsequent Togolese writers have taken up Couchoro's legacy.

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McDougall, Morgan Elizabeth. "Teaching Native American and Middle East American Literature in the Secondary School Classroom." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1522853726757563.

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Shaver, Lisa M. "Identity Issues : Situating the Self in Contemporary Native American Literature." Thesis, University of Essex, 2008. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.495560.

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The following work is an examination of the way in which Contemporary Native American authors from the United States depict the search for self within their novels. Included in this thesis is an 'Introduction' that examines the development of a sense of identity that is unique to Nat!ve Americans, as well as those factors that shape and in some instances, hinder the development ofsuch a self-perception, such as stereotypes and US government policies. In order to provide a thorough examination of this particular topic, this work examines novels from three Native American authors with varying tribal backgrounds and experiences. These authors include Sherman Alexie, Susan Power and Greg Sarris. As each of these authors has vastly different ties and levels of involvement with their particular Native American heritages, this work is able to examine the differences that arise in the development ofNative self-perceptions when faced with environmental and social variances. In doing so, this work not only highlights the many different forms that Native American self-perceptions take, but also the multiple paths that lead to the development of these identities.

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Strong, Brooklynn. "Understanding Native American education a qualitative literature review examining Native American values, boarding schools, and multicultural education and counseling /." Menomonie, WI : University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2006. http://www.uwstout.edu/lib/thesis/2006/2006strongb.pdf.

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Ronnow, Gretchen Lyn. "John Milton Oskison: Native American modernist." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/186243.

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The works of John Milton Oskison, Cherokee writer, originally published in popular magazines, have been out of print since the 1920s. Oskison's stories have often been dismissed as sentimental and lacking a Native American focus; a more diligent reading, however, shows subtle and complex Native American motifs and concerns. John Oskison was born in Indian Territory in 1874, attended Willie Halsell College, Stanford and Harvard Universities, and then began to write for major New York magazines. It was not necessarily popular nor politically advantageous at that time to be known as Indian, especially if one wished to influence public opinion as a journalist. Oskison's Native American point of view and sympathy are strongly coded in the text, embedded in narrative displacements and rhetorical silences. His are "writerly" texts; at the most superficial level readers may see only populist and assimilationist "messages," but the narrative complexities belie such easy readings. Oskison grappled with the issues of being a highly educated mixed-blood trying to defend a tribal heritage while speaking in the most public arenas. This dissertation is a critical examination of the way this struggle manifests itself in his literary production.

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Ray, Sarah Jaquette 1976. "The ecological other: Indians, invalids, and immigrants in U.S. environmental thought and literature." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/10352.

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xi, 233 p. : ill. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.
This dissertation argues that a fundamental paradox underlies U.S. environmentalism: even as it functions as a critique of dominant social and economic practices, environmentalism simultaneously reinforces many social hierarchies, especially with regard to race, immigration, and disability, despite its claims to recognize the interdependence of human and ecological well-being. This project addresses the related questions: In what ways does environmentalism--as a code of behavioral imperatives and as a set of rhetorical strategies--ironically play a role in the exploitation of land and communities? Along what lines--class, race, ability, gender, nationality, age, and even "sense of place"--do these environmental codes and discourses delineate good and bad environmental behavior? I contend that environmentalism emerged in part to help legitimize U.S. imperial ambitions and support racialized and patriarchal conceptions of national identity. Concern about "the environment" made anxieties about communities of color more palatable than overt racism. Furthermore, "environmentalism's hidden attachments" to whiteness and Manifest Destiny historically aligned the movement with other repressive ideologies, such as eugenics and strict anti-immigration. These "hidden attachments" exist today, yet few have analyzed their contemporary implications, a gap this project fills. In three chapters, I detail nineteenth-century environmentalism's influence on contemporary environmental thought. Each of these three illustrative chapters investigates a distinct category of environmentalism's "ecological others": Native Americans, people with disabilities, and undocumented immigrants. I argue that environmentalism defines these groups as "ecological others" because they are viewed as threats to nature and to the American national body politic. The first illustrative chapter analyzes Native American land claims in Leslie Marmon Silko's 1991 novel, Almanac of the Dead . The second illustrative chapter examines the importance of the fit body in environmental literature and U.S. adventure culture. In the third illustrative chapter, I integrate literary analysis with geographical theories and methods to investigate national security, wilderness protection, and undocumented immigration in the borderland. In a concluding fourth chapter, I analyze works of members of the excluded groups discussed in the first three chapters to show how they transform mainstream environmentalism to bridge social justice and ecological concerns. This dissertation contains previously published material.
Committee in charge: Shari Huhndorf, Chairperson, English; Louise Westling, Member, English; David Vazquez, Member, English; Juanita Sundberg, Member, Not from U of 0 Susan Hardwick, Outside Member, Geography

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Vollaro, Daniel Richard. "Origins and Orthodoxy: Anthologies of American Literature and American History." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2008. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/english_diss/36.

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This dissertation examines how the new “multicultural phase” anthologies of American literature treat American history. Anthologies of American literature are more historical, more diverse, and more multidisciplinary than ever before, but they have over-extended themselves in both their historical and representational reach. They are not, despite their diversity and historicism, effective vehicles for promoting critical discussions of American history in the classroom. Chapter One outlines a brief history of anthologies of American literature, while also introducing the terminology and methodology used in this study. Chapter Two explores the role of the headnote as a vehicle for American history in anthologies by focusing on headnotes to Abraham Lincoln in multiple anthologies. Chapter Three examines how anthologies frame Native American origin stories for their readers. Chapter Four focuses on the issues raised by anthologizing texts originally composed in Spanish, and Chapter Five argues for a transnational broadening of the “slavery theme” in anthologies to include Barbary captivity narratives and texts that reference Indian slavery.

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Hatt, Graceanne M. "Recreating identity: Acts of transcendence and resistance in Native American literature." Thesis, Wichita State University, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10057/2409.

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The Native American novel is inherently a “cross-cultural” device with roots both in the western written tradition and Indigenous oral tradition; a mix that oftentimes makes these novels difficult for readers, especially non-Native ones. What makes these texts particularly challenging is that the need for clarification in what and who an American Indian is becomes central to the text, and the way in which myth is enmeshed within the text plays a crucial role in answering that question. In this thesis essay, I examine two broad reoccurring thematic trends that emerge from Native American literature to help illuminate the ways in which myth is used in the project of recreating identity. Through the use of literary illustrations that represent each of these broad trends or strains, I will examine the means through which movement either away from or towards the larger cultural narrative aids the reader in recognizing the issues connected with each of these strains, and how that movement achieves the ends of either healing or subversion. Next I compare the two strains showing how myth as part of oral tradition is interwoven into a palatable western literary form, or how through the use of postmodern devices it is used as part of historical revisionism. The result of this analysis reveals recreating identity is not just a project for Native Americans, but non-Natives as well, as the reader is confronted with issues about the “other” that is a part and a genesis of our own heritage.
Thesis (M.A.)--Wichita State University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dept. of English

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Monroe, Suzanne Stolz. "Images of Native American female protagonists in children's literature, 1928-1988." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/184580.

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The purpose of this study has been to determine prevalent images of Native American female protagonists in Children's Literature from 1928-88, and to note trends in images during the past 60 years. A content analysis of 60 picture books and chapter books has been completed and presented in a descriptive and interpretative format. The most prevalent image of Native American female protagonists in children's literature is a traditional one. This image is consistent throughout the literature from 1928-88, and appears to be represented by both Native American and non-Native American authors and illustrators. Traditional-transitional images appeared between 1957 and 1967, while contemporary images first appeared in the 1970s. In general, the Native American female protagonists in this population of books are presented as strong and positive characters expressing a wide range of emotions. They are named, identified by tribe, and depicted as having multiple skills and interests. They are active and most often appear in rural and outdoor settings within the context of the extended family. Many protagonists are of Southwestern heritage, often depicted as Navajo or Pueblo girls of ages 4-13. Although female protagonists in this population of books are generally characterized as strong and positive, there are still too few books representing strong female Native American images in the whole of children's literature. This research confirms previous findings that Native American male protagonists outnumber female protagonists approximately 10 to 1. Native American authors and illustrators have created approximately one-third of the books in this population. There are 19 Native American authors and 21 Native American illustrators. The earliest books were published by large press; Native press has increased publication since 1975. This research confirms the need for more books featuring Native American female protagonists; more books depicting protagonists from diverse tribal backgrounds, in contemporary settings, urban environments and literate contexts; more books building on the oral tradition and legends of the Southwestern tribes; more involvement of Native American authors, illustrators and publishers in children's literature; and more mentoring of Native American developing authors.

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Shemak, April Ann. "Textual trespassing tracking the native informant in literatures of the Americas /." College Park, Md. : University of Maryland, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/1903/1936.

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Thesis (Ph. D.) -- University of Maryland, College Park, 2003.
Thesis research directed by: English Language and Literature. Title from t.p. of PDF. Includes bibliographical references. Published by UMI Dissertation Services, Ann Arbor, Mich. Also available in paper.

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Tilton, Martha Elizabeth. "To Happiness." Cincinnati, Ohio : University of Cincinnati, 2008. http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/view.cgi?ucin1204297800.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Cincinnati, 2008.
Advisor: Don Bogen PhD (Committee Chair). Title from electronic thesis title page (viewed Sep.4, 2008). Keywords: poetry; Paula Gunn Allen; Adrienne Rich; trauma theory; cartographic theory; Native American. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references.

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Moss, Maria. "We've been here before women in creation myths and contemporary literature of the Native American southwest /." Münster : Lit, 1993. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/30100337.html.

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Schein, Marie-Madeleine. "The Evolution of Survival as Theme in Contemporary Native American Literature: from Alienation to Laughter." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1994. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc278840/.

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With the publication of his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, House Made of Dawn. N. Scott Momaday ended a three-decade hiatus in the production of works written by Native American writers, and contributed to the renaissance of a rich literature. The critical acclaim that the novel received helped to establish Native American literature as a legitimate addition to American literature at large and inspired other Native Americans to write. Contemporary Native American literature from 1969 to 1974 focuses on the themes of the alienated mixed-blood protagonist and his struggle to survive, and the progressive return to a forgotten or rejected Indian identity. For example, works such as Leslie Silko's Ceremony and James Welch's Winter in the Blood illustrate this dual focal point. As a result, scholarly attention on these works has focused on the theme of struggle to the extent that Native American literature can be perceived as necessarily presenting victimized characters. Yet, Native American literature is essentially a literature of survival and continuance, and not a literature of defeat. New writers such as Louise Erdrich, Hanay Geiogamah, and Simon Ortiz write to celebrate their Indian heritage and the survival of their people, even though they still use the themes of alienation and struggle. The difference lies in what they consider to be the key to survival: humor. These writers posit that in order to survive, Native Americans must learn to laugh at themselves and at their fate, as well as at those who have victimized them through centuries of oppression. Thus, humor becomes a coping mechanism that empowers Native Americans and brings them from survival to continuance.

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Keeler, Kyle B. KEELER. ""The earth is a tomb and man a fleeting vapour": The Roots of Climate Change in Early American Literature." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent152327594367199.

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Al-Khaldi, Mubarak Rashed. "Other narratives : representations of history in four postcolonial Native American novels /." The Ohio State University, 1998. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu148795220810831.

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Honea, Benjamin D. "Comanche Boys." UKnowledge, 2016. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/english_etds/44.

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Comanche Boys is a novel that was written and revised during Benjamin Honea’s time at the University of Kentucky. The novel focuses on Brandon, who lives in rural southwest Oklahoma, and how the arrival of two people in his life, one old and one new, changes his future irrevocably. Taking place at the intersections of modern American and Native American life, the narrative explores history, culture, mythology, faith, despair, racism, poverty, vengeance, and justice. The struggles of the past and present, the lost and reclaimed, propel and pervade the lives of the characters.

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Marubbio, M. Elise 1963. "The edge of the abyss: Metamorphosis as reality in contemporary Native American literature." Thesis, The University of Arizona, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/291692.

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The edge of the abyss: Metamorphosis as reality in contemporary Native American literature, approaches the concept of metamorphosis from a metaphysical and philosophical perspective as a culturally defined reality. It focuses on the works of contemporary Native American writers: Leslie Silko, Scott Momaday, Gerald Vizenor, and Louise Erdrich, who address the metamorphic properties of Time and the metamorphic abilities of Man as a continuing link to the supernatural and natural worlds through stories which descend from a history of oral traditions. The Edge of the Abyss explores the use of language and stories as a cultural survival technique for the retention of tribal ideology and world view. It addresses the fine line which exists between Western and Native American concepts of reality in order to re-define metamorphosis within a cultural context. This thesis uses an interdisciplinary approach utilizing anthropological, sociological, shamanistic, literary, and cultural materials in a comparative analysis.

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Fauth, Norienne Courtney. "Excavating the past : (re)writing continuity in postcolonial Native American and Jamaican literature /." Diss., Connect to a 24 p. preview or request complete full text in PDF format. Access restricted to UC campuses, 1999. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ucsd/fullcit?p9936838.

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Emery, Jacqueline. "Writing against Erasure: Native American Boarding School Students and the Periodical Press, 1880-1920." Diss., Temple University Libraries, 2011. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/139150.

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English
Ph.D.
This dissertation seeks to expand our conception of what constitutes Native American letters by examining how the periodical became a prominent form in Native American literary production in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With its focus on the boarding school, Writing against Erasure provides insight into the context in which students first learned how to make complex and sophisticated choices in print. Within the contested disciplinary space of the boarding school, the periodical press functioned as a site for competing discourses on assimilation. Whereas school authorities used the white-run school newspapers to publicize their programs of cultural erasure, students used the student-run school newspapers to defend and preserve Native American identity and culture in the face of the assimilationist imperatives of the boarding schools and the dominant culture. Writing against Erasure highlights the formative impact of students' experiences with the boarding school press on the periodical practices and rhetorical strategies of two well-known Native American literary figures, Zitkala-Sa and Charles Eastman. By treating the periodical writings of these two prominent boarding school graduates alongside the periodical writings produced by boarding school students while they were still at school, Writing against Erasure provides a literary genealogy that reveals important continuities between these writers' strategic and political uses of the periodical press. Writing against Erasure argues that Native American boarding school students and graduates used the periodical press not to promote the interests of school authorities as some scholars have argued, but rather to preserve their cultural traditions, to speak out on behalf of indigenous interests, and to form a pan-Indian community at the turn of the twentieth century.
Temple University--Theses

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Bunthoff, Kathryn C. "Consuming Nature: Literature of the World that Feeds Us." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1241616520.

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Curry, Elizabeth. "Refiguring the Animal: Race, Posthumanism, and Modernism." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/24546.

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This dissertation explores the entanglements of racialized histories and experiences in America with conceptions of animals and animality and examines how African American and Native American writers render these intersections in early-twentieth-century American literature. While animals, with their physical and behavioral features and subordinate status within Western cultural frameworks, were fundamental figures in the US racial imaginary, which relied on dehumanization as a weapon of control, animals (and conceptions about them) also curiously offered a way around and outside of the categorically demeaning declarations of “the human.” Through literary explorations of the nonhuman, the writers in this project reveal forms of interspecies affinity and understanding that affirm biotic connection and also make fantastically strange creatures with whom humans share domestic and proximal space. The figure of “the human” as separate, above, and radically distinct from other life becomes not only strange as well through these readings, but becomes visible as a prominent obstacle to social egalitarian and ecologically cooperative ways of living. I build on research in animal studies and critical race studies approaches to posthumanism to observe how race inflects literary animal representations while also tracking how animality interacts with various notions of personhood. While animalization often coincides with racialized and dehumanized personhood status, writers like Anita Scott Coleman and Zitkala-Ša rupture those associations and engage the animal (comparisons to it and becomings with it) as a fundamentally humanizing figure. On the flip side, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God demonstrates how a racialized animalization trope operates in the novel to defend the killing of a black man. These writers all collapse the binary between human and animal while demonstrating how that binary operates in concert with racial binaries in an American context that extols the human. Reading animals through a lens that acknowledges how race and animality intersect ultimately opens routes for rethinking what it means to be human and defining how we view the nonhuman.

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Grimm, Nancy. "Beyond the "imaginary Indian" : zur Aushandlung von Stereotypen, kultureller Identität & Perspektiven in/mit indigener Gegenwartsliteratur /." Heidelberg : Universitätsverlag Winter, 2009. http://deposit.d-nb.de/cgi-bin/dokserv?id=3238651&prov=M&dok_var=1&dok_ext=htm.

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Stout, Mary Ann 1954. "Early Native American women writers: Pauline Johnson, Zitkala-Sa, Mourning Dove." Thesis, The University of Arizona, 1992. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/292027.

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Turn of the century Native American women's published writing is examined for the elements which presage contemporary Native American women's writing. In particular, three writers' works and biographies are examined in order to determine why they wrote, how they wrote and what they wrote. Pauline Johnson, Zitkala-Sa and Mourning Dove made early contributions to the field of Native American women's literature.

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Niehaus, Emma Elizabeth. "Alternate auralities on the American frontier| Resounding the Indian in the American Western film." Thesis, University of Colorado at Boulder, 2016. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10124043.

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The Western film presents its viewers with a supposed historical depiction of America’s “Great West,” set during the period of the United States’ westward expansion in the nineteenth century. However, the Western film reiterates a mythologized version of the American West that relies on archetypal themes, events, and characters through the synthesis of story, image and music. This paper examines the Western’s most problematic archetype, the “Indian.” The Indian’s liminal role in American mythology will be examined through the analysis of the aural recoding and obscuring of authentic Native American auralities according to the sonic power structures of the Euro-American soundscape, and subsequently, how this aural recoding informs the role of the “Indian” in three successful Western films from the Western’s heyday, Red River (1948), Broken Arrow (1950), and The Searchers (1956).

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Scott-Coe, Justin M. "Covenant Nation: The Politics of Grace in Early American Literature." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2012. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/45.

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The argument of this dissertation is that a critical reading of the concept of "covenant" in early American writings is instrumental to understanding the paradoxes in the American political concepts of freedom and equality. Following Slavoj Zizek's theoretical approach to theology, I trace the covenant concept in early American literature from the theological expressions and disputes in Puritan Massachusetts through Jonathan Edwards's Freedom of Will and the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, showing how the covenant theology of colonial New England dispersed into more "secular" forms of what may be called an American political theology. The first chapter provides an overview of recent attempts to integrate theology and theory, specifically comparing Jacques Derrida and Zizek to better understand the latter's theology of materialism which relies on as well as informs the Reformed Protestant covenantal dichotomy of grace and works. The second chapter establishes the complicated architecture of the covenant concept within seventeenth-century New England Reformed Protestantism, and uses church membership transcripts along with Ann Hutchinson court trial documents to demonstrate how this inherently unstable theology created unintended slippage between God's grace and mankind's works, resulting in a theological formulation remarkably open to Zizek's analysis of political ideology. The third chapter demonstrates how Jonathan Edwards, through his ingenious counter-argument in Freedom of Will, provides a theoretical foundation for an uneasy but necessary alignment of the covenants of works and grace, releasing the subjunctive potential of grace to operate through history as a predeterminer of meaning and, potentially, freedom. In the last chapter, I argue that Emerson finally converts the covenant from a politically conceptualized theological framework for radical grace into a personal institutionalization of grace itself. Stanley Cavell's exploration of Emerson's "constitution" in light of the covenant motif demonstrates the political (im)possibilities inherent in America's self-conceptions of personal liberty and civic equality. In the end, complexities inherent in the concept of the covenant, especially its creative failure to control the radical nature of "grace," are determinative factors in our contradictory American egalitarian ideals.

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Calhoun, Jamie Dawn. "Alluding to Protest: Resistance in Post War American Literature." Miami University / OhioLINK, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1250023062.

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Sumner, David Thomas. ""Speaking a word for Nature" : the ethical rhetoric of American nature writing /." view abstract or download file of text, 2000. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p9986764.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2000.
Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes transcripts of interviews with Stephen Trimble, Barry Lopez, Annick Smith, Bill Kittredge, David James Duncan, Don Snow, David Quammen, and Terry Tempest Williams. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 367-373). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Native American Literatures'

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