Showing papers in "Canadian Review of American Studies in 2009"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that Deadwood allegorizes life within neo-liberalism, and in so doing, the television show dramatizes how Neo-liberal affects and desires differ from more traditional liberal notions of the individual in society.
Abstract: The western usually seems to be a nostalgic genre with a conservative political message. However, one of the most prominent westerns of recent years, HBO’s Deadwood television series, offers a sustained and complex meditation on life within a world ordered entirely around the marketplace. Using the work of theorists Wendy Brown, Michel Foucault, David Harvey, and Fredric Jameson, I argue that Deadwood allegorizes life within neo-liberalism, and in so doing, the television show dramatizes how neo-liberal affects and desires differ from more traditional liberal notions of the individual in society. In a town built outside of the United States, the characters in Deadwood struggle to form a society that both operates according to the free market, yet protects each individual's right to pursue her own self-interest. Deadwood represents a violent past that is both a vision of our neo-liberal present and a possible future.
18 citations
TL;DR: In this article, an analysis of gender and sexuality issues in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation reveals that the program consistently associates women, queer cultures, and sexual subcultures with shallow stereotypes, negativity, and death.
Abstract: In light of the popularity of television crime dramas, it seems prudent to investigate the political nature of their prime-time messaging. From a feminist perspective, an analysis of gender and sexuality issues in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation reveals that the program consistently associates women, queer cultures, and sexual subcultures with shallow stereotypes, negativity, and death.
15 citations
TL;DR: Caballero provides scholars with a rare example of a Mexican-Anglo response to contemporary eugenic discourse as discussed by the authors, where co-authors Jovita Gonzalez and Eve Raleigh reconfigure the discursive net of marriage, citizenship, race, and preservation by engaging two distinct but overlapping discourses of preservation: eugenics, which focuses on preserving racial purity, and ethnography and folklore studies, which focus on preserving the folk in the face of modernization.
Abstract: By the 1930s, eugenicists had involved matters of blood, inheritance, and reproduction in the creation of a bio-political discourse that made “Americanness” a question of blood relations—a family affair—rather than a question of citizenship. Caballero provides scholars with a rare example of a Mexican–Anglo response to contemporary eugenic discourse. In Caballero, co-authors Jovita Gonzalez and Eve Raleigh reconfigure the discursive net of marriage, citizenship, race, and preservation by engaging two distinct but overlapping discourses of preservation: eugenics, which focuses on preserving racial purity, and ethnography and folklore studies, which focus on preserving the folk in the face of modernization. This essay reads Caballero alongside Jovita Gonzalez's folklore studies and fiction in order to examine how the text critiques eugenics’ and ethnography's either/or rhetoric of preservation and assimilation. This critique allows Gonzalez and Raleigh to envision the preservation of Mexican-Americ...
14 citations
TL;DR: The authors read On the Road through Mikhail Bakhtin's discussion of the chronotope and found it to be a portrayal of the problems of an American romantic notion of identity, which makes universal claims about the transcendental potential of the individual.
Abstract: This paper interrogates Jack Kerouac's appropriation and transformation of a Thoreauvian-style transcendentalism by reading On the Road through Mikhail Bakhtin's discussion of the chronotope. Kerouac's chronotopic resistance to dominant visions of the United States brings with it a problematic identity politics, specifically in terms of the racialization of the representation of transcendent identity. Rather than a personal or specific failure of a particular author or text, this tension can be read as a portrayal of the inevitable failure of social critiques that are based on notions of finding an “authentic” identity in a transcendence beyond, and disconnected from, historical and personal contexts. In other words, On the Road can be seen as a portrayal of the problems of an American romantic notion of identity, which makes universal claims about the transcendental potential of the individual. On the Road thus points to a difficulty surrounding dominant US notions of the self-reliance of the i...
12 citations
TL;DR: This article revisited the consen- sus achieved in Cold-War criticism of Moby-Dick in light of our awareness of the cultural construction of recent events, drawing on the work of ReneGirard on the subject.
Abstract: Beginning with Edward Said's reflections on the media fall-out post 9/11, the ideological representations of which he likens to the mythi- cal drama enacted in Moby-Dick, the article goes on to revisit the consen- sus achieved in Cold-War criticism of the novel in light of our awareness of the cultural construction of recent events. Specifically, the article ques- tions the dichotomizing of the novel in terms of East and West and the crit- ical casting of Fedallah and Ahab as scapegoats for collective guilt, draw- ing on the work of ReneGirard on the subject. In this way, it confirms the analogical justness of Said's evocation of Moby-Dick in relation to America's ''collective imagination'' of its relationship to the Near East and argues the book's power to re-orient and subvert that very representation by revealing both its mythical core and the collective acts of violence it seeks to conceal or sanction.
10 citations
TL;DR: In On the Road, Kerouac splits his ethnic (French) and national (American) sides into two figures, Sal and Dean, to demonstrate the deficits and benefits of both parts of a hyphenated identity as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Jack Kerouac believed that his French Canadian roots held the key to his knowledge, despite the fact that he became known as the ''principal avatar'' of a generation of American youth. In his bestselling autobiographical novel, On the Road, Kerouac splits his ethnic (French) and national (American) sides into two figures, Sal and Dean, to demonstrate the deficits and benefits of both parts of a hyphenated identity. Italian Sal sees himself as the eternal outsider, whereas Dean is America itself. Yet Sal uses his outsider qualities to connect with other outsiders whose ''roots'' are beyond the limits of nationhood. And Dean, despite the seemingly endless freedom of his ''routes'' across the country, is stuck in old tropes of Americanness that do not afford him new possibilities. Together, they create a vision of America that is full of its own grandeur, while refusing to be insular. Resume´ : Jack Kerouac etait persuadeque ses racines canadiennes- francaises etaient ala base de ses connaissances, malgrele fait qu'il ait etereconnu comme le « principal avatar » d'une generation de jeunes Americains. Dans son roman autobiographique On the Road, un succesd e librairie, Kerouac illustre son coteethnique (francais) et son cotenational (americain) en deux personnages, Sal et Dean, afin de demontrer les avantages et les desavantages des deux parties d'origines differentes. L'Italien Sal se voit comme l'eternel etranger, tandis que Dean represente l'Amerique meme. Malgrecela, Sal emploie sa marginalitepour etablir des liens avec d'autres etrangers dont les « racines » vont au-delade l'esprit
8 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the role of violence in a key early scene of Invisible Man, but mostly in Ellison's early short story, "A Party Down at the Square" and argues that there is an important addition to the understanding of Ellison's writing available through an examination of the role violence plays in his work.
Abstract: While Ralph Ellison's unshakable faith in the American democracy and his obvious desire to be counted among the great tradition of American (not necessarily African American) literature, have at times made him appear accommodationist to some, and even "dangerous," to use Amiri Baraka's word, to others, this view overlooks the centrality of violence in Ellison's fiction. By examining the role of violence in a key early scene of Invisible Man, but mostly in Ellison's early short story, "A Party Down at the Square," this essay argues that there is an important addition to the understanding of Ellison's writing available through an examination of the role violence plays in his work.
7 citations
TL;DR: The Spanish-American War was a key moment in the development of U.S. imperialism and the popular western as discussed by the authors and its iconic figure was Roosevelt's rough rider who yoked frontier heroism to overseas militarism, in the process justifying American extra-continental expansionism and extending the ideological reach of the western.
Abstract: The Spanish-American War was a key moment in the development of U.S. imperialism and the popular western. Its iconic figure was Roosevelt's rough rider—the Anglo-Saxon gentleman cowboy par excellence—who yoked frontier heroism to overseas militarism, in the process justifying American extra-continental expansionism and extending the ideological reach of the western. The black military presence in Cuba—and, subsequently, Puerto Rico and the Philippines—threatened that process by challenging white superiority on the western frontier and the imperial battlefield. When white myth makers suppressed this story of black heroism, they drove it deep into the western's creative fabric. By following the fortunes of black soldiers, in print and in society, we can recognize how deeply the western formula is motivated and shaped by the blackness it denies and to what different ends African-American writers yoked western adventure, military action, and meanings of manhood in the United States.
7 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that disability is not merely a symbolic excess to war but rather is part of the fundamental and material logic of war and its relationship to national belonging, and that the attempt to cover up the violence of Canada's new combat role fits a pattern of the avoidance of acknowledging disability in the Canadian public sphere.
Abstract: Abstract: This paper situates media representations of Canadian “wounded” veterans coming home from Afghanistan in the broader context of war-veteran representation, from a disability studies perspective. The paper raises questions about the absence from these public sites of discourse about psychiatric disability. The author proposes that the attempt to cover up the violence of Canada's new combat role fits a pattern of the avoidance of acknowledging disability in the Canadian public sphere. She examines media coverage of those soldiers who have come home prematurely in order to articulate their tacit and explicit relationship to notions circulating of what military personnel refer to as the “vital interests of a nation.” She argues that, in this discourse, disability is not merely a symbolic excess to war but rather is part of the fundamental and material logic of war and its relationship to national belonging.
7 citations
TL;DR: The International Gay Rodeo Association (IGRA) as mentioned in this paper was founded by Delmas Howe and other artists who resisted the imposition of a rigidly heterosexual cowboy mythology and met the Reagan-era cowboy revival on a queer frontier.
Abstract: During the 1980s, both Hollywood and the Reagan administration attempted to resurrect frontier masculinity by rewriting the Vietnam War and rehabilitating its defeated hero: the straight-shooting cowboy. But a quarter-century before Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain (2005) collided in the space of myth-making with America's latest cowboy president, individuals opened a counter-hegemonic space that challenged social marginalization in the public sphere. Picking up where subversive westerns from the late 1960s had left off, the little-known artist Delmas Howe and the founders of the International Gay Rodeo Association (IGRA) resisted the imposition of a rigidly heterosexual cowboy mythology and met the Reagan-era cowboy revival on a queer frontier. Examining John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy (1969), Andy Warhol's Lonesome Cowboys (1969), Howe's series of paintings entitled Rodeo Pantheon (1977–91), and the founding and rise of the IGRA (accompanied by interviews with IGRA participants), this article un...
7 citations
TL;DR: The dime-novel western is assiduous in its devotion to revealing the truth of the body; whether disguised, mistaken, lost, unknown, or de-racialized, the dime western renders visible the authentic body, and each body is invariably rewarded or punished according to its ideological role in promoting or impeding popular notions of frontier history.
Abstract: This article examines how the dime-novel western is affected by the predominance of performance westerns such as film, Wild West, and stage drama. The dime western compulsively describes the bodies of its characters to establish their social meanings within both particular dime stories and larger narratives of frontier history. Dime-western bodies are marked so that audiences can scrutinize their authenticity, assessing quickly where each body fits in the pantheon of western history and comparing each body's actions to the historical “script.” The dime-novel western is assiduous in its devotion to revealing the truth of the body; whether disguised, mistaken, lost, unknown, or de-racialized, the dime western renders visible the authentic body, and each body is invariably rewarded or punished according to its ideological role in promoting or impeding popular notions of frontier history.
TL;DR: The authors argue that Hannah Webster Foster carefully navigated various literary modes and social conventions in crafting her narrative, and the end result is a series of revisions and elisions that protect Foster's reputation, while also rendering the novel far more sympathetic to the heroine.
Abstract: This paper opens with a consideration of the ways women's virtue was judged by their innocence (real or feigned) of worldly vice. For a respectable female author, this creates a quandary: how to write convincingly about a female heroine's supposed sexual wickedness without appearing to possess knowledge of, or insight into, such things. Considering available modes of representing crime (the criminal broadside and execution sermon), the formal constraints and implications of various literary forms (the epistolary novel versus omniscient narration), and the restrictions the real-life narrative imposed, this paper argues that Hannah Webster Foster carefully navigated various literary modes and social conventions in crafting her narrative. The end result is a series of revisions and elisions that protect Foster's reputation, while also rendering the novel far more sympathetic to the heroine.
TL;DR: This paper argued that during the 1950s, a secularizing process was underway in the United States and examined the rise of bingo, Sunday shopping, Billy Graham, and the Revised Standard Version of the Bible.
Abstract: The article takes issue with the received narrative by arguing that, during the 1950s, a secularizing process was underway in the United States. In making this case, the author examines the rise of bingo, Sunday shopping, Billy Graham, and the Revised Standard Version of the Bible.
TL;DR: In this paper, the United States of America's addiction to patriotism is examined by interrogating and "defying the lies" of some of US patriotism's most cherished ideas, documents, leaders, and slogans.
Abstract: Since the United States's illegal invasion and occupation of the sovereign nation of Iraq on 20 March 2003, I have published papers that critically interrogate the participation of the “sovereign” US Indigenous nations in this unjust, illegal, imperialistic war. Due to my writings, on 24 June 2007, I was invited to make a presentation at a peace vigil and rally focusing on “What Is the Highest Form of Patriotism?” The speech that I gave is provided in full text in this article, where I probe the United States of America's addiction to patriotism by interrogating and “defying the lies” of some of US patriotism's most cherished ideas, documents, leaders, and slogans. I end with a slight twist of the words of the third Buddhist noble truth, freedom from the addiction to patriotism is possible in this lifetime.
TL;DR: The authors examines the novel's linguistic and narrative devices, especially its juxtapositions of external differences (a Yankee in medieval England, different dialects, machinery in a pre-industrial Arthurian world and at Hank's own industrialized America) and explores the human capacity for both malice and mercy through the artifice and art of storytelling.
Abstract: Many critics writing on Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee claim that the novel eludes easy interpretation because of its complex ironic twists, its juxtaposition of comedy and tragedy, and its penchant for pointing the sword of satire both at the pre-industrial Arthurian world and at Hank's own industrialized America. This confusion has led some critics to throw up their hands and write off the novel as one of Twain's artistic “failures.” However, exploring the novel's use of language and the role of story-telling, in particular, may shed light on its seeming ambiguity. A Connecticut Yankee explores the human capacity for both malice and mercy through the artifice and art of story-telling. From the first pages, the novel draws attention to the power of language to perpetrate violence and to mask it. This paper examines the novel's linguistic and narrative devices, especially the novel's juxtapositions of external differences—a Yankee in medieval England, different dialects, machinery in a pre-ind...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the different ways in which Annie Proulx, in her story ''Brokeback Mountain,'' scriptwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, and Ang Lee in his film address the central tensions between desire and social conditioning through a re-exploration of the western genre.
Abstract: This essay examines the different ways in which Annie Proulx, in her story ''Brokeback Mountain,'' scriptwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, and Ang Lee in his film address the central tensions between desire and social conditioning through a re-exploration of the western genre. Using the concept of ''in-between space,'' the article shows how the ''text'' (i.e., story/film) is the product of many hands each bringing certain knowledge and approaches to the material and extending outward into new, challenging areas of work. From this mixing of authors there emerges a powerful, tragic story that reveals much about the social conformity of the West embedded in masculinity, patriarchy, and domesticity. This social pressure is examined through the contrasting ''textual'' use of space, panopticism, and a constraining sense of family set against the powers of nature, love, and memory.
TL;DR: In contrast to the other versions of this popular Indian character that appeared at one time or another in various media, the Dell comic books depict a Tonto who operates on his own, without the white Ranger at his side.
Abstract: This essay investigates the Dell Comics series titled The Lone Ranger's Companion Tonto, produced between 1951 and 1959. In stark contrast to the other versions of this popular Indian character that appeared at one time or another in various media, the Dell comic books depict a Tonto who operates on his own, without the white Ranger at his side. These 1950s comic books, I argue, reflect the dominant culture's fantasy about the purpose of the newly formed Indian Claims Commission (ICC), created in 1946 as a “final solution” to the so-called “Indian problem.” In this public fantasy, Tonto is made to play the role of the “Indian lawyer”: a strategic go-between who ostensibly works on behalf of Indian tribes but who actually promotes the expropriation of Indigenous lands and the assimilation of Indigenous nations.
TL;DR: The authors examined how early modern propagandists for colonial expansion constructed Indigenous peoples and promoted specific action, by configuring Indigenous people as either violent or docile, they, in turn, become candidates for extermination or conversion respectively.
Abstract: “‘Mercyfull Warres agaynst These Naked People’: The Discourse of Violence in the Early Americas” explores how several early modern propagandists for colonial expansion construct Indigenous peoples and promote specific action. Working from the textual collections of Richard Eden and Richard Hakluyt, this paper examines how each writer takes specific steps to control terminology. By configuring Indigenous people as either violent or docile, they, in turn, become candidates for extermination or conversion respectively. The paper argues that Hakluyt's more complicated, contradictory, and subtle framing of colonial progress in fact urges a significantly more imperious and universal colonial project, invested in a widespread homogenization of culture and identity.
TL;DR: This paper explored the relationship between dominant frontier values, on the one hand, and violence against women and non-Anglo groups (particularly Mexicans and Native Americans), on the other, in a close reading of Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove quartet.
Abstract: This essay offers a revision of frontier mythologizing by engaging issues of gender, race, and nation from the perspective of trauma theory. Crucial questions about the relationship between dominant frontier values, on the one hand, and violence against women and non-Anglo groups (particularly Mexicans and Native Americans), on the other, are explored in a close reading of Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove quartet. The analysis focuses upon the “symbolic economy” of violence represented by McMurtry's use of the captivity motif and his representation of violent mestizo or mixed-blood characters who symbolize the conservative racial politics of his reappropriation of the western genre. This reading of the contemporary neo-western reveals larger implications for the ways in which we might reread the U S frontier as a national trauma narrative.
TL;DR: In this article, the US Food and Drug Administration, regulator of one quarter of the American domestic economy, was a target of the regulatory reform program and how these impacts were perceived by staff members inside the agency.
Abstract: Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980 and, as promised, quickly took action to rein in the regulatory agencies and limit the size of government. The US Food and Drug Administration, regulator of one quarter of the American domestic economy, was a target of that regulatory reform program. This article explores not only the Reagan administration's impact on the FDA in the early 1980s, but how these impacts were perceived by staff members inside the agency. Getting to grips with how FDA staff members perceived the Reagan victory and thereafter the tangible outcomes of the Reagan administration's regulatory reform agenda from 1981 to 1982 (measured using budget levels, personnel, workload, enforcement actions, and morale) helps clarify and accentuate
TL;DR: In the Canadian Review of American Studies as mentioned in this paper, a special issue of the CRS is devoted to the past, present, and future of war's productivity in the Americas, and it is intended, polemically on the part of the editor at least, to promote critical thinking and political practice that make war less possible.
Abstract: War occupies a special place in the history of the Americas for its manifest productivity. War has established boundaries, energized identities, secured wealth, determined poverty, and made durable the conflicts over property, freedom, equality, and respect. This special issue of the Canadian Review of American Studies is intended to think critically through the past, present, and future of war’s productivity in the Americas. And it is intended, polemically on the part of the editor at least, to promote critical thinking and political practice that make war less possible.
TL;DR: This paper examined the depiction of intercultural relations in realist fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focusing on affir- mations of cosmopolitanism in American regional literature from 1850 to 1930.
Abstract: Increased scholarly attention is now being paid to the depiction of intercultural relations in American literature across all periods. The books examined in this review article contribute importantly to this body of work, paying particular, though not exclusive, attention to realist fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As Henry Wonham and Mary Esteve demonstrate, we find embedded within realist literary works sometimes blatantly obvious, sometimes teasingly oblique, represen- tations of racial minorities, women, and immigrants that are most often malicious in intent and inevitably invidious in consequence. Also investi- gating the depiction of intercultural relations—though focusing on affir- mations of cosmopolitanism in American regional literature from 1850 to 1930—Tom Lutz tenders a more sanguine reading of the realist tradition, finding within it reverberations of a democratic sensibility that is, in his view, inalienably American and indeed the very hallmark of American literature.