Western Literature Association
41st Annual Conference
Feeling Western
25-28 October 2006
The Grove Hotel, Boise, Idaho
Hosted by Boise State University
Wednesday 25 October
1–4Executive Council MeetingRiver Fork
4–7Registration 2nd Floor Landing
5–6:30Executive Council DinnerCottonwood Grille
7:15-10WelcomeEvergreen
Tara Penry, WLA President
Silent Film: Back to God’s Country, starring Nell Shipman
Introduction byTom Trusky, Idaho Film Collection
Original Score Performed by Bijou Orchestrette
Reception
Thursday 26 October
8–3Registration2nd Floor Landing
8–5Book ExhibitAspen
Thursday 8–9:15Session One
1A Mary Clearman Blew and Western Feminism
EvergreenChair: O. Alan Weltzien, University of Montana, Western
Sarah Hulme, Utah State University
“Mending Geographies: Mary Clearman Blew’s Balsamroot”
Susan Rowe, Boise State University
“Isolation and Identity in All But the Waltz”
Cassie Hemstrom, Boise State University
“The Rebirth of the Sow in the River: Creating a Narrative of Choice in Mary Clearman Blew’s Writing Her Own Life”
Evelyn I. Funda, Utah State University
“The ‘Threat to the Common Herd’:
Monsters in Mary Clearman Blew’s Writing”
1BForeign Places in the Heart
CedarChair: Nancy Owen Nelson, Yavapai College
Susan Lang, Yavapai College
From Juniper Blue
Nancy Owen Nelson, Yavapai College
From Don’t Stay Too Long: Memoir of an Army Brat
Penelope Reedy, Idaho State University
From Coffee Royal, Pocatello Blend/Rare Beans
Charlotte M. Wright, University of Iowa Press
“Henry’s Story”
1CUnderstanding Animals in the Western Frontier
RapidsChair: Sarah E. McFarland, Northwestern State University
Jennifer J. Clark, University of Southern California
“As Honest as the Horse Between My Knees: Slavery, Horsemanship, and Stewardship in the Western Novel”
Tamas Dobozy, Wilfrid Laurier University
“ ‘Between You, the Coyotes and the Crickets a Thought Don't Have Much of a Chance': The Artificial Frontiers of Sam Shepard's True West”
Lauri Chose, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
“Writing Arctic Animals: Forging the Connection”
Andrew Wingfield, George Mason University
“Stalking the Mountain Lion”
1DDemystifying/Remystifying Robinson and Proulx
WhiteChair: Susan Kollin, Montana State University
Water
Elizabeth Lester Barnes, Boise State University
“Transcending Boundaries:
The Un-Housing of Bachelard in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping”
Catherine Holmes, College of Charleston
“ ‘The Remystification of Nearly Everything’: Another Look at Myth, Metaphor, and Mobility in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping”
Sayzie Koldys, Boise State University
“Reimagining the Emptiest State: Magical Realism in Annie Proulx’s Wyoming Stories”
Stacy Coyle, University of Denver
“Open Places vs. Charged Spaces in Annie Proulx”
1EForces of Nature and Community in Cather’s Fiction
River ForkChair: Anne Kaufman, Milton, Massachusetts
Angela Glover, University of Kansas
“Jim Burden, Lost in Space: How Liminality and Temperament Theory Work to Produce a Tragic Ending in Willa Cather’s My Antonia”
Margaret Doane, California State University, San Bernardino
“ ‘Bridled by Caution’: Community-Enforced Conformity in Willa Cather’s Nebraska Novels”
Mark Hartvigsen, Boise State University
“ ‘Geography is a terribly fatal thing sometimes’:
Determinism in O Pioneers!”
1FThe Trouble with “Black” and “White”
ClearwaterChair: Michael K. Johnson, University of Maine, Farmington
Brian Flota, George Washington University
“Whose Country Is It?
Ishmael Reed and Percival Everett’s African American West”
Katie Rawson, University of Mississippi
“Roping Uncle Sam’s Canon: Narrative Voice and the American Myth of the West in The Life and Adventures of Nat Love”
Amber Leonard, Leeward Community College
“A Place in Paradise:
Perceiving (In)authenticity in Tara Bray Smith’s West of Then”
John Escobedo, Rice University
“The Racial Logic of White U.S. Mestizaje in Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton’s Who Would Have Thought It? and The Squatter and the Don”
1GReading Western Fiction by Genre
IvyChair: Jill Heney, Boise State University
John Donahue, Concordia University
“Zane Grey’s Idaho, The Border Legion, and Deadwood”
Paul Varner, Oklahoma Christian University
“Twenty-first Century Paperback Westerns”
William Katerberg, Calvin College
“At Home in Utopia: Time and Place in Utopian Science Fiction set in the American West”
John C. Davies, Bishop Grosseteste College & Portland State University
“Western Feeling, Feeling Western: The Novels of Molly Gloss”
1HMaking Home In A Restless World:
Suite 214Perception, Representation, Preservation
Chair: Liz Stephens, Utah State University
Brandon R. Schrand, University of Idaho
“Curating Memory: Seeing Home as a Tourist”
Rob Kunz, Utah State University
“Growing Pains:
The Battle Over Land and Family in the Shadow of the Tetons”
Liz Stephens, Utah State University
“American West Heritage Center:
The Selling of a Lifestyle, The Commodification of a Dream”
Denice Turner, University of Nevada, Reno
“Flying Home: Finding a Place in the Space of the West”
Thursday 9–10Coffee Break
Aspen
Thursday 9:30–10:45Session Two
2AEmotion in the Western Classroom: Workshop and Conversation
EvergreenCo-chairs: Tara Penry, Boise State University
Michelle Payne, Boise State University
2BIdaho Poetry: Charles Potts
RapidsIntroduction by John Crawford, West End Press
2CFiction Reading: Daniel Orozco and Joy Passanante
WhiteIntroduction by Mary Clearman Blew, University of Idaho
Water
2DSacajawea’s Story: A Lemhi Shoshone Perspective
River ForkRozina George (Lemhi Shoshone), Great-grandniece of Sacajawea
2EWilla Cather and War
ClearwaterChair: Mary R. Ryder, South Dakota State University
Steven Trout, Fort Hays State University
“Willa Cather and War: An Overview”
Ann Romines, George Washington University
“Willa Cather’s Civil War: A Long Engagement”
Michael Gorman, Independent Scholar
“Jim Burden and the White Man’s Burden:
My Antonia and the Plains Indian Wars”
Richard Harris, The Webb Institute
“One Little Feller’s Quest for ‘Something Splendid’:
Another Look at Cather’s Claude Wheeler”
2FEncountering Western Landscapes:
Suite 214Writing, Living, and Feeling One’s Way
Chair: Alex Hunt, West Texas A&M University
SueEllen Campbell, Colorado State University
“Things That Happen in Deserts”
Alex Hunt, West Texas A&M University
“Annie Proulx’s Exploration Narrative: That Old Ace in the Hole and James William Abert’s Expedition to the Southwest”
Barbara J. Cook, Mount Aloysius College
“Life Changes in an Instant:
Changing Relationships with Western Landscapes”
Nina Björnsson, Eastern New Mexico University
“Gender/Migration/The West:Going TransAmerica”
Thursday 11–12:15Session Three
3AEmbodying Social and Environmental Justice
RapidsChair: Steve Tatum, University of Utah
John Streamas, Washington State University
“The Diminishing Significance of Genre in the Literature of Wartime Japanese America”
Kyoko Matsunaga, Hiroshima University
“Meats, the Female Body, and Toxicity: Environmental Justice in Ruth L. Ozeki’s My Year of Meats”
Hilary Hawley, Washington State University
“Cultural Activism as Environmental Justice in Castillo’s So Far From God”
Dora Ramirez-Dhoore, Boise State University
“Third World Women and Ecological Matters in Tomás Rivera’s …y no se lo trago la tierra and Helena Maria Viramontes’s Under the Feet of Jesus”
3BDomestic Violence in the West
WhiteChair: Lillian Schlissel, Brooklyn College
Water
Lillian Schlissel, Brooklyn College
“The Literary History of Secrets”
Barbara Richard, Sequim, Washington
“Walking Wounded”
Mary Clearman Blew, University of Idaho
Judy Blunt, University of Montana
Jeanette Weaskus, Northwest Indian College
3CSex, Gender, and Social Critique in Plains Literature
River ForkChair: Doug Werden, West Texas A&M University
Amy T. Hamilton, University of Arizona
“ ‘A Constant Move’:
Adventure and Social Critique in Sarah Wakefield’s Captivity Narrative”
Peter L. Bayers, Fairfield University
“Charles Alexander Eastman's From the Deep Woods to Civilization and the Shaping of Native Manhood”
Matt Evertson, Chadron State College
“Feeling Western Bodies:
Sex and Settlement in the Narratives of Mari Sandoz”
Kim Palmore, University of California at Riverside
“My ‘Queer’ Àntonia”
3DKnowing Western Rivers
ClearwaterChair: T. S. McMillin, Oberlin College
Laurie McMillin, Oberlin College
“ ‘Ragged, Rugged, Dark-Complected’:
Race, Reflection, and Twain’s Mississippi”
Mary Keller, University of Wyoming
“Native Ways of Knowing Rivers in the Rocky Mountain Region:
From Creek Mary’s Blood to the Native Waters Curriculum”
T. S. McMillin, Oberlin College
“Into the Great Unknown: Powell’s Colorado River”
Nick Petzak, Case Western Reserve University
“Selling the Middle Fork”
3ECashing In?
IvyMoney & Politics in the Production of West Coast Music
Chair: Brock Dethier, Utah State University
David Fenimore, University of Nevada, Reno
“Songs for Sale: Woody Guthrie’s Columbia River Compromise”
Karl Germeck, Utah State University
“The White Guy from Santa Monica: Ry Cooder and Chavez Ravine”
Brock Dethier, Utah State University
“The Cost of Artistic Independence”
3FTales of Disaster: A Gathering of Creative Readings
Suite 214Chair: Ann Putnam, University of Puget Sound
Beverly Conner, University of Puget Sound
“Hearing Voices”
Ann Putnam, University of Puget Sound
“Lights Go Out”
Sarah Jane Sloane, Colorado State University
“The Lifeguard,” from The Antler Diaries
Beth Kalikoff, University of Washington, Tacoma
“Café du Monde”
3GJudge Holden: The Mythic Trickster Rides the West
Suite 320in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian
Chair: Jerry D. Mathes II, University of Idaho
Jerry D. Mathes II, University of Idaho
“Classical Tricksters and Judge Holden’s Malevolent Power”
Steven Coughlin, University of Idaho
“Landscape of the Tricksters”
Joshua Cilley, University of Idaho
“Trickster Fools in Blood Meridian”
Sean Prentiss, University of Idaho
“Convergence and Divergence of Tricksters in Blood Meridian and Winter in the Blood”
3HThe Academic Library of the Future:
CedarWhat's In It for the Literary Scholar?
Chair: Thomas Peele, Boise State University
Donald Barclay, University of California, Merced
Alan Virta, Boise State University
Denise Shorey, Northwestern University
Larry Kincaid, Boise State University
3IBasque Block Tour
GrovePreregistration required. Cost: $5. Also offered Wed 10/25—1:30 pm.
LobbyMeet at Grove Hotel lobby and walk across Capitol Blvd to Basque Block. This tour will only appear in the final program if a sufficient number of members have preregistered for it. Space limited.
Thursday 12:15–2Past President’s Address & Luncheon
Evergreen
12:15Luncheon
1–1:45Address: William Handley, University of Southern California
Open seating will be available at 1 pm for those who wish to hear the address only. All WLA registrants are welcome to attend at this time.
Thursday 2–3:15Session Four
4AFeeling Western on/under the Skin
RapidsChair: Krista Comer, Rice University
Elizabeth J. Wright, Pennsylvania State University, Hazelton
“An ‘Unexpected Visitor’:
Disability and Family Politics in the Fiction of Laura Ingalls Wilder”
Linda Lizut Helstern, North Dakota State University
“Written on the Skin: Ableism and the Native Subject”
Krista Comer, Rice University
“Feeling Western/Feeling White”
Bruce Ballenger, Boise State University
Title pending
4BStock-Taking in the Literary Northwest
WhiteChair: Peter Donahue, Birmingham Southern College
Water
John Trombold, Independent Scholar, Oregon
“Reading Portland: Toward a Place-Based Pedagogy of Politics”
Peter Donahue, Birmingham-Southern College
“Taking Stock of the Stock-Takers:
Regional Identity and the 1946 Writers’ Conference on the Northwest”
Michael Strelow, Willamette University
“Lost and Found: Authors, Editors, and Publishers in the Northwest”
Philip Heldrich, University of Washington, Tacoma
“The Absence and Presence of Mount Rainier:
Ansel Adams, Martha Hardy, and the Mountain”
4CWomen’s Collaborations and Relationships in Willa Cather’s
River ForkFiction and Career
Chair: Ann Romines, George Washington University
Michael Schueth, Creighton University
“ ‘Her Masterful Will’:
Mary Baker G. Eddy, Celebrity Biography, and Cather’s Canon”
Pat Brennan, Clarkson College
“The Sister Narratives of Willa Cather”
Mary R. Ryder, South Dakota State University
“That D---d Mob of Women Performers:
Women Artists as Rivals in Cather’s Fiction”
Janis P. Stout, Texas A & M University
“Curious Connections: Cather, Silko, and Randall in the Southwest”
4D Wild Encounters
ClearwaterChair: Charles Crow, Bowling Green State University
Michael L. Johnson, University of Kansas
“Wildfire: A Taste of Authenticity”
Bob Lyon, Bellevue, Washington
“Blowups: Fact and Fiction in Firefighting”
Christopher McGill, Boise State University
“Wildness Wherever: Social Subversion and the Wilderness Experience of Charles Bowden’s Blood Orchid”
Susan J. Tyburski, Colorado School of Mines
“Seduced by the Wild:
Audrey Schulman’s Journey into the Arctic Heart of Wilderness”
4EProto-Westerns and Early Westerns
IvyChair: Lawrence I. Berkove, University of Michigan, Dearborn
Nicolas Witschi, University of Western Michigan
“ ‘I do not like newspaper notoriety’: Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, The
James Gang, and the Op-Ed Autobiography”
Jefferson D. Slagle, St. Bonaventure University
“The Heirs of Buffalo Bill: Performing Authenticity in the Dime Western”
Seth Bovey, Louisiana State University, Alexandria
“Pulp Fiction, Gangster Films, and the Beginnings of the Noir Western”
4FReading and Teaching Intermountain Western Women
Suite 214Chair: Pamela Steinle, California State University, Fullerton
Ron McFarland, University of Idaho
Title pending
Christine Shearer-Cremean, Black Hills State University
“No Place to Raise a Girl: The Destructive Secular Wilderness of Kim Barnes’s In the Wilderness”
Susan Swetnam, Idaho State University
“Western Family Romance as Western Political Manifesto:
Grace Jordan’s Home Below Hell’s Canyon”
Yvonne Rutford, University of Wisconsin, Superior
“Anger Issues:
A Reflection on Teaching Terry Tempest Williams’ Refuge”
4GInsiders, Outsiders, and Their Stories of Place
Suite 320Chair: Karen Uehling, Boise State University
Jamin Casey, Montana State University
“Living in the Landscape: The Relationship between a Sense of Being Local and the Attitude toward the Landscape It Generates”
Hal Crimmel, Weber State University
“A Place in the Sun: A Northerner Meets the Desert West”
David Mogen, Colorado State University
“Boom and Bust”
Jacoba Mendelkow, Utah State University
“Tractor”
Thursday 3-6Shuttle to/from Anne Frank Memorial
Front Street exit, Grove Hotel
Thursday 4–5:15Plenary Session
Anne Frank Memorial, 8th St. & Boise River
Poetry Reading: Human Rights and the American West
Featuring Lawson Fusao Inada
6–7Graduate Students’ Dinner Satchel’s Grill
Thursday 7:30-9Distinguished Achievement Award Lecture
Egyptian Theatre
Featuring Terry Tempest Williams
Friday 27 October
7–8 Past Presidents’ BreakfastCedar
8–5Registration2nd Floor Landing
8–5Book ExhibitAspen
Friday 8–9:15Session Five
5APredators in the West: Narratives and Counter-Narratives
EvergreenChair: Tom Lynch, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
Eric Heyne, University of Alaska, Fairbanks
“Moose Ranching and Lupine Narration:
Alaska’s Love/Hate Affair with Wolves”
Tom Lynch, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
“El Lobo’s Return: A Bioregional Narrative of Re-wilding”
Sherry Booth, Santa Clara University
“Thinking about Canis lupus: The Literary Wolf and Ecofeminism”
Capper Nichols, University of Minnesota
“Grizzly Men: Treadwell, Peacock, Herzog”
5BFeminized Spaces of Western Literature
RapidsChair: Audrey Goodman, Georgia State University
Melissa Bowles, Utah State University
"'If I Had Children': May Swenson's Poetic/Motherly Work"
Amy Baird, Utah State University
“In the Shelter of the Tortilla:
The Role of the Kitchen in the Art of Carman Lomas Garza and in Elva Trevino Hart's memoir, Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child”
Dan Holtz, Peru State College
“Marion Marsh Brown Country:
A Worthwhile Stop in Nebraska’s Literary Geography”
5CWestern Women’s Voices
WhiteChair: Jennifer Dawes Adkison, Idaho State University
Water
Jennifer Dawes Adkison, Idaho State University
“Appropriating Voice: Textual Editing and Western Women’s Narratives”
Carmen Pearson, Mount Royal College
“ ‘Unpublished Emotion’: Interpreting the Private Diaries of Carmen Barragán Messinger, Mexican American”
Laura Woodworth-Ney, Idaho State University
“ ‘The Best-trained Ditch Can Never Be a River, Nor the Gentlest Wife a Girl Again’: History and the Female Literary Critique of Irrigated Settlement”
Nancy Rushforth, Utah Valley State College
“The Teller Tells the Tale”
5DViolence, Catharsis, and Western Embodiment
River ForkChair: David Mogen, Colorado State University
Marc Dziak, Boise State University
“Fingers Ripping Out Teeth, Teeth Biting Off Fingers:
Naturalism and Inherent Brutality in Frank Norris’s McTeague”
Wendy Witherspoon, University of Southern California
“Deadwood: Lawlessness, Violence, and the Postmodern Gothic Frontier”
Tim Steckline, Black Hills State University
“Kidneystones, Pigpens, and Bodily Catharsis in Deadwood”
Doug Werden, West Texas A&M University
“Poetry as Mulch: Linda Hasselstrom as a Prairie Poet”
5EStorying Western Science and History
ClearwaterChair: Karen Ramirez, University of Colorado, Boulder
Dorys C. Grover, Texas A&M University, Commerce
“Vardis Fisher and the Death of Meriwether Lewis”
Megan Jensen, California State University, Fullerton
“Embedded in the Soil:
The Treelessness of the Tallgrass Prairies Through 1862”
Ann Lundberg, Northwestern College
“The Origin of the Black Hills: Native Stories and Geological Narratives”
Lee Schweninger, University of North Carolina, Wilmington
“ ‘Something to Wail About’:
A Literature of the Whale and the Makah Hunt”
5FInterpreting Texas and the Literary Plains
IvyChair: Diane Quantic, Wichita State University
Susanne George Bloomfield, University of Nebraska, Kearney
“First Inhabitants”
Daryl W. Palmer, Regis University
“Plains Emotion: What Willa Cather Made of Kansas”
Chen Xu, Hangzhou Dianzi University, People’s Republic of China
“An Interpretation of Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove”
Kyhl Lyndgaard, University of Nevada, Reno
“Collaboration, Competition, and Relocation in the Life and Works of Edwin James”
5GNarratives of Mormon Gender and Resistance
Suite 214Chair: Christine Edwards Allred, Eagle, Idaho
Kacy Lundstrom, Utah State University
“The Seductress and the Seduced:
Notions of Gender in Samson and Delilah”
Russ Beck,
“The Missionary Position”
Heather Robison, University of Washington
“Interstices of Religion, Politics, and Land Management in Rural Nevada; or, A Mormon Girl Gone Left”
Friday 9–10Coffee Break
Aspen
Friday 9:30–10:45Session Six
6APeriodicals, Politics, and Western Feeling