Universiẗat, Diss., 1999--Bonn.

Thesis (M.A.)--Villanova University, 2008. / English Dept. Includes bibliographical references.

AbstractIn his introduction to Tribal Secrets (1995) Osage scholar Robert Warrior acknowledges the "resiliency and resistant spirit of Native America" as evident in the literature of the Native American Renaissance (xvi). Though he does not elaborate on this statement there is an implied balance in his pairing that is compelling. Resistance literature is an established category of writing that is political in its very nature. Resilience literature as a concept in literary criticism does not yet exist, but the construct of resilience as theorized in psychological research "extends from the 1800's to the present" and focuses on how individuals and communities have adapted, survived, and even thrived despite adversity (Tusaie and Dyer 2004: 3).A theory of resistance looks at how writers have resisted the false or one-sided histories and ideologies imposed upon Native Americans. Resistance literature seeks to critique and interrogate those ideologies. A theory of resilience identifies the ways Native American writers have adopted and adapted concepts from their own tribal cultures, and continued those concepts in their literature despite attempts to erase that culture. This, in a sense, is also resistance because it resists the attempts by the oppressors to erase or eradicate those tribal cultures; however, a theory of resilience offers a more nuanced way of looking at precisely which concepts have been continued in the literature and how.Resilience theory offers a more specific form of literary criticism beyond the all encompassing umbrella of "resistance," to show how key concepts from Native American oral tradition have continued into the present via Native American literature. Therefore, for the purposes of this study, "resistance" might be thought of as anti-colonial and "resilience" as pro-cultural.The four authors to be studied here include, Sherman Alexie, Louise Erdrich, Nora Marks Dauenhauer, and Ofelia Zepeda.

Thèse numérisée par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Sherman Alexie's work revolves around Native Americans—Native Americans who deal with problems such as poverty, alcoholism, transgenerational trauma, modern life, ethnic stereotyping, and institutionalized racism. His voice is thought-provoking, poignant, destabilizing, and also, absolutely funny. His unique approach to heavy political matters offers us a different way of resistance in which people laugh through their tears and maybe change how they react to the issues surrounding themselves. In this thesis, I offer an analysis of who Sherman Alexie is as an author in the United States. I also look into his importance for Turkey in terms of our issues of racism and our understanding of political humour, in hopes of influencing other destabilizing works through his translations. Later, I discuss how he is portrayed in the Turkish literary system by examining two of his translated books, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (Çılgın Atı Düşlemek) and Reservation Blues (Kızılderiliye Yer Yok), through Lawrence Venuti's views on the foreignization and domestication methods in The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. Subsequently, I present my translation of "Lawyer's League", "Can I Get a Witness?", "Do Not Go Gentle" and "Flight Patterns" from Ten Little Indians as an alternative translation method. Finally, I analyse the foreignization method in relation to translating Sherman Alexie, before explaining my translation choices.

No description available.

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio University, August, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. Release of full electronic text on OhioLINK has been delayed until September 1, 2014. Includes bibliographical references (p. 96-99)

Though bound historically through hundreds of years, the African-Native American relation has not received much attention by scholars of literature; hence, the emphasis of this thesis is to investigate the literary portrayal of the interethnic relation between African Americans and Native Americans through the blues trope. The blues trope provides an intriguing literary platform for the psychological and physical struggles in finding an identity within such a diverse multiethnic society like the United States. For African American writer Alice Walker and Native American author Sherman Alexie the blues trope is a successful literary device in expressing long lost and rediscovered emotions, identities and hopes among an ever growing multiethnic nation.

This thesis reads the fiction and poetry of Spokane/Coeur d’Alene writer Sherman Alexie as predominantly urban Indian literature. The primary experience of the growing majority of American Indians in the twenty-first century consists in the various threats and opportunities presented by urban living, yet contemporary criticism of literature by (and about) American Indians continues to focus on the representations of life for those tribally enrolled American Indians living on reservations, under the jurisdiction of tribal governments. This thesis provides critical responses to Alexie’s contemporary literary representations of those Indians living apart from tribal lands and the communities and traditions contained therein. I argue that Alexie’s multifaceted representations of Indians in the city establish intelligible urban voices that speak across tribal boundaries to those urban Indians variously engaged in creating diverse Indian communities, initiating new urban traditions, and adapting to the anonymities and visibilities that characterise city living. The thesis takes a broadly linear chronological structure, beginning with Alexie’s first published collection of short stories and concluding with his most recent works. Each chapter isolates for examination a distinct aspect of Alexie’s urban Indian literature, so demonstrating a potential new critical methodology for reading urban Indian literatures. I open with a short piece explaining my position as a white, British scholar of the heavily politicised field of American Indian literary studies, before the introductory chapter positions Alexie in the wider body of Indian literatures and establishes the historical grounds for the aims and claims of my research. Chapter one is primarily concerned with the short story ‘Distances’, from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), and the Ghost Dance religion of the late nineteenth century, reading Alexie’s representations of this phenomenon as explorations of the historical and political tensions that divide those Indians living on tribal lands and those living in cities. Chapter two discusses the difficulties of maintaining a tribal identity when negotiating this divide towards the city, analysing the politics of indigenous artistic expression and reception in Alexie’s first novel, Reservation Blues (1995). Alexie’s second novel, Indian Killer (1996), signals the relocation of his literary aesthetics to the city streets, and chapter three detects and unravels the anti-essentialist impulse in Alexie’s (mis)use of the distinctly urban mystery thriller genre. Grief, death and ritual are explored in chapter four, which focusses on selected stories from Ten Little Indians (2003), and explains Alexie’s characters’ need for new, urban traditions with reference to an ethics of grieving. Chapter five connects the politics of time travel to the representation of trauma in Flight (2007), and addresses Alexie’s representations of violence in Ten Little Indians and The Toughest Indian in the World (2000), proposing that it is the structural violences of daily life, rather than the murder and beatings found throughout his work, that leave lasting impressions on urban Indian subjectivities. My conclusion brings together my approaches to Alexie’s urban Indian literature, and suggests further areas for research.