November 1996
192 pp. 5 1/2x 8 1/2
$30.00scloth 0-8032-2735-3 KRUTUR
The Turn to the Native is a long-awaited assessment of Native American studies by one of its leading practitioners. Learned and passionate, the book is a timely account of Native American literature and the critical writings that have grown up around it. It is also a polemical intervention by a critic with abiding loyalties to Native American culture and to the Western intellectual heritage that has often been seen as hostile to Native culture and society.
The volume opens with Arnold Krupat's discussion of several issues in contemporary Native American studiesóquestions about racial and cultural "essentialism," the ambiguous position of non-Native critics in the field, cultural "sovereignty" and "property," and the place of Native American culture in a so-called multicultural era.
Subsequent chapters discuss the relationship of Native American literature with postcolonial writing and postmodernism. Krupat comments on the recent work of Native writers Leslie Marmon Silko, Betty Louise Bell, Diane Glancy, N. Scott Momaday, Louis Owens, W. S. Penn, and James Welch. Examining the importance of autobiography, Krupat offers a detailed reflection on the writing of Gerald Vizenor.
The final chapter, "A Nice Jewish Boy among the Indians," is a moving meditation on the author's attempt to balance his Jewish, working-class heritage, his adherence to Western "critical" ideals, and his ongoing loyalty to the values of Native cultures. Krupat conveys the complexities of his personal and professional allegiance to Native cultures in a society of diverse, often contending cultures.
Arnold Krupat is a professor of literature at
Sarah Lawrence College. He is the author of Ethnocriticism:
Ethnography, History, Literature and the
coeditor of I Tell You Now: Autobiographical
Essays by Native American Writers (Nebraska
1987).
The Journal of Patrick Gass, May 14, 1804 to September 23, 1806
March 1996. ca. 336 pages. 6 x 9 in., introduction, map, notes, sources. CIP. LC 82-8510.
$45.00s Cloth 0-8032-2916-X LEWJ10
The Lewis and Clark expedition is both one of the greatest geographical adventures undertaken by Americans and one of the best documented at the time. The University of Nebraska Press edition of the Journals of Lewis and Clark now reaches volume 10 of the projected 13 that will contain the complete record of the expedition.
In order that the fullest record possible be kept of the expedition, captains Lewis and Clark required their sergeants to keep journals to compensate for possible loss of the captains' own accounts. The sergeants' accounts extend and corroborate the journals of Lewis and Clark and contribute to the full record of the expedition. Volume 10 contains the journal of expedition member Sergeant Patrick Gass.
Gass was promoted to sergeant on the expedition to fill the place of the deceased Charles Floyd. His journal was subsequently published and proved quite popular: it went through six editions in six years. A skilled carpenter, Gass was almost certainly responsible for supervising the building of Forts Mandan and Clatsop; his records of those forts are particularly detailed and useful. Gass was to live until 1870, the last survivor of the expedition and the one who lived to see transcontinental communication fulfill the promise of the expedition.
Gary E. Moulton is a professor of history at the
University of NebraskañLincoln and recipient of the J. Franklin
Jameson Award of the American Historical Association for the
editing of these journals.
May 1996. ca. 272 pages. 6 x 9 in., preface, map, notes, bibliographical essay, index. CIP. LC 95-20900.
$40.00s Cloth 0-8032-3179-2 MANBEH
The encounter of natives and colonists in New England is a rich source of folklore and scholarship. The story, which usually ends with the defeat of Metacom (King Philip) in 1676, tells of how the natives were overwhelmed by the colonists. That picture, while rich and deeply tragic, is misleading. Disease, economic and ecological intrusion, and political and military pressures did alter native life. Some groups were largely destroyed or driven out by the English. But many others persisted in the region, as villages or as networks of families and individuals on the margins of colonial society. Their history offers a new and enlightening view of eighteenth-century New England.
Behind the Frontier tells the story of the Indians in Massachusetts as English settlements moved past them between 1675 and 1775, from King Philip's War to the Battle of Bunker Hill. Daniel R. Mandell explores how local needs and regional conditions shaped an Indian ethnic group that transcended race, tribe, village, and clan, with a culture that incorporated new ways while maintaining a core of "Indian" customs. He examines the development of Native American communities in eastern Massachusetts, many of which survive today, and observes emerging patterns of adaptation and resistance that were played out in different settings as the American nation grew westward in the nineteenth century.
Daniel R. Mandell is an assistant professor of
history at the State University of New York-Oswego. This is his
first book.
The American Indian Quarterly
Quarterly, ISSN 0095 182X
Individuals $25.00 per year
Institutions $45.00 per year
For foreign subscriptions please add $5.00. Payment must accompany order. Make checks payable to University of Nebraska Press and mail to: University of Nebraska Press, PO Box 880484, Lincoln NE 68588-0484.
The University of Nebraska Press is pleased to publish the American Indian Quarterly. The AIQ publishes original articles, shorter contributions, commentaries, review articles, and book reviews. It is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal of the anthropology, history, literature, and arts of Native North Americans.
Forthcoming contributors for 1996 include
John T. Scenters-Zapico, Genie Babb and Paula Gunn Allen, John R. Welch, Ron McFarland, Kate Shanley, Robert McPherson, Barbara Mann, Thomas Thornton, Stuart Christie, Christine Colasurdo, Geoff Peterson, and Philip Round.
Morris W. Foster is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of Being Comanche: The Social History of an American Indian Community, winner of the 1992 Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Prize of the American Society for Ethnohistory.
Address submissions to the editor:
Morris W. Foster
Department of Anthropology
University of Oklahoma
Norman OK 73019
The American Indian Quarterly is now on the World Wide Web at http://www.uoknor.edu/aiq/index.html
October 3, 2000