{"pk":42886,"title":"Mapping the Transnational in Contemporary Native American Fiction: Silko and Welch","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Revisiting the terrain of the 2012 JTAS Special Forum, “Charting  Transnational Native American Studies,” this essay argues both that the  transnational is a valuable, productive lens for understanding Native  American literature, and that a consideration of Native  American texts is indispensable to the “transnational turn” in  Americanist literary scholarship. The essay argues that Native American  literary texts engage the transnational in three ways: affirming  “America” as transnational cultural space from its inception  by staging ways Native cultures “dis-identif[y] with the nation”;  affirming the transnational complexity of Native cultures; and  registering Pan-Indian and indigenous transnationalisms vitally alive in  the present. The essay advances these claims through  readings of two recent historical novels by major Native American  authors: Leslie Marmon Silko’s Gardens of the Dunes (2000), and James  Welch’s The Heartsong of Charging Elk (2001).  Both novels are set in  the late nineteenth century, a critical period in  Native American history, especially in the American West; and both  novels map complex itineraries for Native American characters who travel  abroad, scripting transnationalism in diasporic terms. The essay argues  that Silko’s novel portrays transnational encounter  as global transindigeneity, casting the transnational as a vehicle to  awaken and activate feminist and especially ecofeminist transindigenous  solidarities, while Welch employs the form of the transnational  bildungsroman to make visible tribal processes of  cultural adaptation and transnational dimensions of tribal cultures at  “home.”","language":"en","license":{"name":"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0","short_name":"CC BY 4.0","text":"<p>Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.</p>","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0"},"keywords":[{"word":"Leslie Marmon Silko"},{"word":"James Welch"},{"word":"Native American Literature"},{"word":"transindigeneity"},{"word":"ecofeminism"}],"section":"SPECIAL FORUM: Globalization and American Literature","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3jc9g2vb","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Lori","middle_name":"","last_name":"Merish","name_suffix":"","institution":"Georgetown University","department":"None"}],"date_submitted":"2018-11-03T21:41:17-04:00","date_accepted":"2018-11-03T21:41:17-04:00","date_published":"2018-12-29T15:25:12-05:00","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/jtas/article/42886/galley/31964/download/"}]}