| In the early-1970s, a new generation of feminist writers emerged whose topic--broadly defined--was the postmodern American West. Through the first half of 1996, however, critics had written very little about this literary movement, or its writers. Why? I explore this "why" question--in its broadest implications--in this dissertation. I conceptualize the new female regionalism by drawing upon the New Western women's history, feminist literary criticism, postmodern geography, sexuality studies, and the new literature on nationalism. Because landscape is the most telling signature of the Western geographic imaginary, I use landscape representation as a "frame" that permits the discussion of topics of recurrent interest to writers: quality of female life in a postmodern era, racial history, political dreams, metaphysics, female sexuality, ecofeminism, and a feminist State. The goal is to suggest the massive scale re-conceptualization of Western literature that awaits doing.;Chapter I sets up what I call "the Dominant Cultural Imaginary." I survey Wallace Stegner's writings on Western literary culture to address the gender gap, and the gap between the New and Old West, that are common to Western literary studies. Chapter II uses Joan Didion, Wanda Coleman, and Maxine Hong Kingston to consider the problem of (female gendered) urbanism for a region conceived through its association with (male-gendered) wilderness. If Chapter II features writers who aren't deemed "authentic" Westerners, Chapter III takes up writers whose "Western" identity is unchallenged, Leslie Silko, and Barbara Kingsolver. I link their "Western-ness" to their representations of what William Cronon calls "the wilderness ideal." I critique that ideal for its First World and male bias.;Chapter IV argues that Western space is itself encoded in masculinist sexual terms. I examine feminist erotic spaces through analyses of Pam Houston, Sandra Cisneros, and Louise Erdrich. Space is also encoded in nationalist terms, the final Chapter (V) contends. By way of a discussion of Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, Gloria Anzaldua, and Mary Clearman Blew, I demonstrate that a new anti-individualist Americanism is visible in today's regionalism. Time will tell how it influences broader domestic and political affairs in the next century. |
