Postwestern Cultures

Postwestern Cultures synthesizes the most critical topics of contemporary scholarship of the American West within a single volume. This interdisciplinary anthology features leading scholars in the varied fields of western American literary studies and includes new regional studies, global studies, studies of popular culture, environmental criticism, gender and queer theory, and multiculturalism. Postwestern Cultures, like all successful studies of western American literature, is necessarily diverse and wide-ranging; it grasps the multifaceted quality of the landscape, literature, and critical analysis by engaging postmodern theory, spatial theory, cultural studies, and transnational and transcultural understandings of the local. This collection emphasizes the importance of understanding the region not as a confined or static space but as a constantly changing entity in both substance and form. It examines subjects ranging from the use of frontier rhetoric in Japanese American internment camp narratives to the emergence of agricultural tourism in the New West to the application of geographer J. B. Jackson's theories to abandoned western landscapes. 

"Like a showdown in an old western, a meeting between post-prefixed studies and the West was just plain inevitable. Postwestern Cultures stages a version of the event, and anyone interested in the American West ought to study the result."-Daryl W. Palmer, Western Historical Quarterly -- Daryl W. Palmer Western Historical Quarterly "With its multiplicity of approaches Postwestern Cultures works to liberate "the West" from its moorings in place, time, and myth. Its interesting and insightful essays provide ways to construct the region not as a static but as a fluid entity that, like Whitman's iconic American self, "contains multitudes"."-Donna Campbell, Great Plains Quarterly -- Donna Campbell Great Plains Quarterly "This outstanding collection provides not only an overview of the best current scholarship on the West, but also a glimpse of the future of Western Studies."-Darryl Hattenhauer, American Studies -- Darryl Hattenhauer American Studies "This wide-ranging collection of essays is an ambitious demonstration of the New Western Criticism at work."-Geneva M. Gano, Journal of the West -- Geneva M. Gano Journal of the West

Susan Kollin is an associate professor of English at Montana State University and the author of Nature's State: Imagining Alaska as the Last Frontier. Contributors: Michael Beehler, Neil Campbell, Krista Comer, Nancy Cook, Audrey Goodman, Melody Graulich, Susan Kollin, Beth Loffreda, Lee Clark Mitchell, Capper Nichols, David Oates, John Streamas, and Stephen Tatum.