The Cambridge History of Native American Literature

Description

Native American literature has always been uniquely embattled. It is marked by divergent opinions about what constitutes authenticity, sovereignty, and even literature. It announces a culture beset by paradox: simultaneously primordial and postmodern; oral and inscribed; outmoded and novel. Its texts are a site of political struggle, shifting to meet external and internal expectations. This Cambridge History endeavors to capture and question the contested character of Indigenous texts and the way they are evaluated. It delineates significant periods of literary and cultural development in four sections: "Traces & Removals" (pre-1870s); "Assimilation and Modernity" (1879-1967); "Native American Renaissance" (post-1960s); and "Visions & Revisions" (21st century). These rubrics highlight how Native literatures have evolved alongside major transitions in federal policy toward the Indian, and via contact with broader cultural phenomena such, as the American Civil Rights movement. There is a balance between a history of canonical authors and traditions, introducing less-studied works and themes, and foregrounding critical discussions, approaches, and controversies.

Melanie Benson Taylor is Professor of Native American studies at Dartmouth College, where she teaches courses in American, US southern, and Indigenous literature and film. She is the author of Disturbing Calculations: The Economics of Identity in Postcolonial Southern Literature, 1912-2002 (2008), Reconstructing the Native South: American Indian Literature and the Lost Cause (2012), and a new monograph called The Indian in American Southern Literature (2020). She is Executive Editor of Native South, and serves on the advisory boards of south: a scholarly journal, The Faulkner Journal, and the Digital Yoknapatawpha project.

'... effectively reminds the reader of the inherently interdisciplinary nature of the field. This volume serves as both a thoughtful survey of the state of the field and a bold pronouncement of where it is headed.' J. J. Donahue, Choice