280 research outputs found
Cult: A Composite Novel
No full textCult (redacted)
The first component of the thesis is a composite novel called Cult which falls into two parts with seven narratives in each. Part 1 tracks the protagonist, Ellen, from her first involvement with the cult through to her eventually leaving it. Although fiction, the first half of the book answers the kinds of questions the author is asked when people discover that she was once a sannyasin (a follower of the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh). While the experiences of meditation, group therapy and communal living are all faithfully rendered within the stories, the need for strong characters, narrative drive and a lightness of touch takes precedence.
Part 2 picks up Ellen’s story some twenty or so years later and explores what becomes of her in middle age. It also looks at other groups in society, such as academia, the law and the internet dating community which each have their own jargon, hierarchies, rituals and rules but are not considered to be cults.
The book examines the question raised in the Epigraph, ‘how do we be together when we feel so alone’ with a focus on relationships other than the familial and the romantic.
Collisions, Chasms and Connections: a Performative Exploration of the Composite Novel Form
The second part of the thesis is both a critical and creative response to three contemporary American books: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout; A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan; and Legend of a Suicide by David Vann. The critical element comprises a close reading of the three books; a chronological reconstruction of their overarching storylines; and a consideration of what their authors have said about writing the books. It concludes that, in the composite novel, the simultaneous presentation of multiple views and storylines operate much like a 3D image to give the impression of depth to the characters and situations rendered. The creative element of the essay is a playful and personal response to the texts
"I'm indiginous, I'm indiginous, I'm indiginous": Indigenous Rights, British Nationalism, and the European Far Right
No full textParallel Encounters: Culture and the Canada-US Border
No full textThe essays collected in offer close analysis of an array of cultural representations of the Canada-US border, in both site-specificity and in the ways in which they reveal and conceal cultural similarities and differences. Contributors focus on a range of regional sites along the border and examine a rich variety of expressive forms, including poetry, fiction, drama, visual art, television, and cinema produced on both sides of the 49th parallel. The field of border studies has hitherto neglected the Canada-US border as a site of cultural interest, tending to examine only its role in transnational policy, economic cycles, and legal and political frameworks. Border studies has long been rooted in the US-Mexico divide; shifting the locus of that discussion north to the 49th parallel, the contributors ask what added complications a site-specific analysis of culture at the Canada-US border can bring to the conversation. In so doing, this collection responds to the demands of Hemispheric American Studies to broaden considerations of the significance of American culture to the Americas as a whole -- bringing Canadian Studies into dialogue with the dominantly US-centric critical theory in questions of citizenship, globalisation, Indigenous mobilisation, hemispheric exchange, and transnationalism
Tribal Fantasies: Native Americans in the European Imaginary, 1900-2010
No full textThis transnational collection discusses the use of Native American imagery in twentieth and twenty-first-century European culture. With examples ranging from Irish oral myth, through the pop image of Indians promulgated in pornography, to the philosophical appropriations of Ernst Bloch or the European far right, contributors illustrate the legend of "the Indian." Drawing on American Indian literary nationalism, postcolonialism, and transnational theories, essays demonstrate a complex nexus of power relations that seemingly allows European culture to build its own Native images, and ask what effect this has on the current treatment of indigenous peoples
Stirrup-Neck Bottle
No full textThe stirrup-neck bottle is an unusual form found not only in the Lower Mississippi Valley, but also in the American Southwest, Mesoamerica, and South America. The idea may have entered the Mississippi Valley from the eastern Pueblos via the Arkansas River. While a few vessels are painted red, or more rarely red and white, most are plain. Some examples have triple stirrups, while others may be compound vessels or effigies forms. They are most prominent in the Memphis area and northeast Arkansas, where they data from approximately AD 1400 to 1600.https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/chnash-museum-chucalissa-gallery2/1000/thumbnail.jp
Louise Erdrich
No full textLouise Erdrich is one of the most critically and commercially successful Native American writers, securing prestigious awards and an international readership with her debut novel, Love Medicine. This book is the first fully comprehensive treatment of Louise Erdrich's writing, analysing the textual complexities and diverse contexts of her work to date. Drawing on, and taking to task, the critical archive relating to Erdrich's work and to Native American literature more broadly, Stirrup explores the full depth and range of her authorship, charting common themes in her writing and interrogating positive and negative critical responses alike. Breaking Erdrich's oeuvre down into several groupings - the poetry, early and late fiction, memoir and children's writing - Stirrup develops individual readings of both the critical arguments and the texts themselves, demonstrating a number of comparative threads that cut across boundaries. Alongside nuanced readings, this book argues that Erdrich's work has developed an increasing political acuity and alertness to the profound relationship between ethics and aesthetics in Native American literatures. Ultimately, Erdrich's insistence on being read as an American writer is shown - in her own terms - to be in constant and mutually-inflecting dialogue with her Ojibwe heritage; resulting in work that is powerful, richly textured, and above all an engaged reflection on questions of influence in all its forms, community, sovereignty, history, and writing itself. Both synthesizing received wisdom, and offering numerous original readings of its own, this sophisticated analysis is of use to students and readers at all levels of engagement with Erdrich's writing
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