eBook

Mapping the Americas

Shari M. Huhndorf

2009,2010

Overview

InMapping the Americas, Shari M. Huhndorf tracks changing conceptions of Native culture as it increasingly transcends national boundaries and takes up vital concerns such as patriarchy, labor and environmental exploitation, the emergence of pan-Native urban communities, global imperialism, and the commodification of indigenous cultures. While nationalism remains a dominant anticolonial strategy in indigenous contexts, Huhndorf examines the ways in which transnational indigenous politics have reshaped Native culture (especially novels, films, photography, and performance) in the United States and Canada since the 1980s.Mapping the Americasthus broadens the political paradigms that have dominated recent critical work in Native studies as well as the geographies that provide its focus, particularly through its engagement with the Arctic. Among the manifestations of these new tendencies in Native culture that Huhndorf presents are Igloolik Isuma Productions, the Inuit company that has produced nearly forty films, includingAtanarjuat, The Fast Runner; indigenous feminist playwrights; Leslie Marmon Silko'sAlmanac of the Dead; and the multimedia artist Shelley Niro. Huhndorf also addresses the neglect of Native America by champions of \"postnationalist\" American studies, which shifts attention away from ongoing colonial relationships between the United States and indigenous communities within its borders to U.S. imperial relations overseas. This is a dangerous oversight, Huhndorf argues, because this neglect risks repeating the disavowal of imperialism that the new American studies takes to task. Parallel transnational tendencies in American studies and Native American studies have thus worked at cross-purposes: as pan-tribal alliances draw attention to U.S. internal colonialism and its connections to global imperialism, American studies deflects attention from these ongoing processes of conquest.Mapping the Americasaddresses this neglect by considering what happens to American studies when you put Native studies at the center.

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Subject: Alaska / Canada / Eskimos / Eskimos -- Alaska -- Ethnic identity / Eskimos -- Alaska -- Politics and government / Ethnic identity / Ethnic Studies / Indian arts / Indian arts -- North America / Indians of North America / Indians of North America -- Ethnic identity / Indians of North America -- Politics and government / Inuit / Inuit -- Canada -- Ethnic identity / Inuit -- Canada -- Politics and government / LITERARY CRITICISM / Native American / Native American Studies / North America / Politics and government / SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology
• ISBN: 9780801448003, 080144800X, 0801458803, 9780801458804, 1501705660, 9781501705663