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This dissertation proposes to examine the conspiracy narratives of Don DeLillo, Joan Didion, and Leslie Marmon Silko that retell American experience with the Cold War and its culture of paranoia for the last half of the twentieth century. Witnessing the resurgence of Cold War paranoia and its dramatic twilight during the period from late 70s to mid-80s and the sudden advent of the post-Cold War era that has provoked a volatile mixture of euphoria and melancholia, the work of DeLillo, Didion, and Silko explores the changing mode of Cold War paranoid epistemology and contemplates its conditions of narrative possibility in the post-Cold War era. From his earlier novels such as Players, The Names, and Mao II to his latest novel about 9/11 Falling Man, DeLillo has interrogated how the American paradigm of paranoid national self-fashioning envisioned by Cold War liberals stands up to its equally paranoid post-Cold War nemesis, terrorism. In his epic dramatization of Cold War history in Underworld, DeLillo mythologizes the doomed sense of paranoid connectivity and collective belonging experienced during the Cold War era. In doing so, DeLillo attempts to contain the uncertainty and instability of the post-Cold War or what Francis Fukuyama calls "post-historical" landscape of global cognitive mapping within the nostalgically secured memory of the American crowd who had lived the paranoid history of the Cold War. In her novels that investigate the history of American involvements in the Third World from Eisenhower through Kennedy to Reagan, Didion employs the minimalist narrative style to curb, extenuate, or condense the paranoid narratives of Cold War imperial romance most recently exemplified in the Iran-Contra conspiracy. In her latest Cold War romance novel The Last Thing He Wanted, Didion reassesses her earlier narrative tactic of "calculated ellipsis" employed in A Book of Common Prayer and Democracy and seeks to commemorate individual romances behind the spectacles of Cold War myth of frontier. Departing from the rhetoric of "hybrid patriotism" in Ceremony, a Native American story of spiritual healing and lyricism that works to appease white paranoia and guilt associated with the atomic bomb, Silko in Almanac of the Dead seeks to subvert the paranoid regime of Cold War imperialism inflicted upon Native Americans and Third World subjects by mobilizing alternative conspiracy narratives from the storytelling tradition of Native American spirituality. Silko?s postnational spiritual conspiracy gestures toward a global cognitive mapping beyond the American Cold War paradigm of "paranoid oneworldedness".

"Storied Voices in Native American Texts: Harry Robinson, Thomas King, James Welch and Leslie Marmon Silko" approaches Native American literatures from within an interdisciplinary framework that complicates traditional notions o f literary "origins" and canon. It situates the discussion of Native literatures in a Native American context, suggesting that contemporary Native American writing has its roots in Native oral storytelling traditions. Each of these authors draws on specific stories and histories from his or her Native culture. They also draw on European elements and contexts because these are now part o f Native American experience. I suggest that Native oral tradition is already inherently novelistic, and the stories that lie behind contemporary Native American writing explicitly connect past and present as aspects o f current Native reality. Contemporary Native American writers are continuing an on-going and vital storytelling tradition through written forms. A comparison of the texts o f a traditional Native storyteller, Robinson, with the highly literate novels of King, Welch and Silko, shows how orally told stories connect with the process o f writing. Robinson's storytelling suggests how these stories "theorize" the world as he experiences it; the Native American novel continues to theorize Native experience in contemporary times. Native writers use culturally specific stories to express an on-going Native history. Their novels require readers to examine their assumptions about who is telling whose story, and the traditional distinctions made between fact and fiction, history and story. King's Green Grass. Running Water takes stories from Western European literary traditions and Judeao-Christian mythology and presents them as part of a Native creation story. Welch's novel Fools Crow re-writes a particular episode from history, the Marias River Massacre, from a Blackfeet perspective. Silko's Almanac of the Dead recreates the Mayan creation story o f the Popol Vuh in the context o f twentiethcentury American culture. Each of these authors maintains the dialogic fluidity of oral storytelling performance in written forms and suggests that stories not only reflect the world, but that they create it in the way that Robinson understands storytelling as a form of theory.

ix, 226 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / This dissertation argues that American women writers have revised sacred texts to challenge patriarchy, racism, and colonialism and rewritten American history to reveal how biblical scripture has been implicated in these processes. I focus on the literary strategies of Toni Morrison, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Lucille Clifton to rewrite sacred texts and create myths for a new society. In different ways, these writers redefine Christianity, often by countering the erasures of women in biblical scripture, recovering suppressed texts such as those from the gnostic tradition, and creating new sacred texts. Chapter I traces the history of feminist scriptural revision from the early feminist movement to its resurgence in the late-twentieth century. In this period, a number of authors rewrote religious scripture from a pre-Christian tradition; Elaine Pagels' The Gnostic Gospels played a critical role in the attention given to scripture suppressed by Christianity and the potential it holds for writers interested in recovering alternative epistemologies. Chapter II focuses on Morrison's Beloved and Jazz , which are concerned with the way biblical theology is proliferated through apocalyptic narrative strategies and omniscient narration. This chapter investigates the shift Morrison makes between biblical and gnostic concerns in the first two books of her trilogy. Chapter III analyzes the final book in Morrison's trilogy, Paradise , and compares it to Silko's Gardens in the Dunes . Here, Morrison relies on gnostic sources to scrutinize the effects of biblical notions of utopia on literature and its implications for social relations. Gardens uses the same sources but puts them to different uses, subverting their authority in a rewriting that supports Native survival through a program of cultural syncretism. Chapter IV examines the poetry of Lucille Clifton, who, although initially revising Christianity through her refiguring of the Lucifer character, rejects that tradition following the events of 9/11. Clifton's work in Mercy marks a juncture in women's revisions of sacred texts in its departure from Christianity and its introduction of a new sacred text and moral code not predicated upon hierarchy. In conclusion, I consider how these writers extend feminist and anti-racist traditions of scriptural revision explored in the introduction. / Adviser: Shari Huhndorf

xi, 233 p. : ill. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / This dissertation argues that a fundamental paradox underlies U.S. environmentalism: even as it functions as a critique of dominant social and economic practices, environmentalism simultaneously reinforces many social hierarchies, especially with regard to race, immigration, and disability, despite its claims to recognize the interdependence of human and ecological well-being. This project addresses the related questions: In what ways does environmentalism--as a code of behavioral imperatives and as a set of rhetorical strategies--ironically play a role in the exploitation of land and communities? Along what lines--class, race, ability, gender, nationality, age, and even "sense of place"--do these environmental codes and discourses delineate good and bad environmental behavior? I contend that environmentalism emerged in part to help legitimize U.S. imperial ambitions and support racialized and patriarchal conceptions of national identity. Concern about "the environment" made anxieties about communities of color more palatable than overt racism. Furthermore, "environmentalism's hidden attachments" to whiteness and Manifest Destiny historically aligned the movement with other repressive ideologies, such as eugenics and strict anti-immigration. These "hidden attachments" exist today, yet few have analyzed their contemporary implications, a gap this project fills. In three chapters, I detail nineteenth-century environmentalism's influence on contemporary environmental thought. Each of these three illustrative chapters investigates a distinct category of environmentalism's "ecological others": Native Americans, people with disabilities, and undocumented immigrants. I argue that environmentalism defines these groups as "ecological others" because they are viewed as threats to nature and to the American national body politic. The first illustrative chapter analyzes Native American land claims in Leslie Marmon Silko's 1991 novel, Almanac of the Dead . The second illustrative chapter examines the importance of the fit body in environmental literature and U.S. adventure culture. In the third illustrative chapter, I integrate literary analysis with geographical theories and methods to investigate national security, wilderness protection, and undocumented immigration in the borderland. In a concluding fourth chapter, I analyze works of members of the excluded groups discussed in the first three chapters to show how they transform mainstream environmentalism to bridge social justice and ecological concerns. This dissertation contains previously published material. / Committee in charge: Shari Huhndorf, Chairperson, English; Louise Westling, Member, English; David Vazquez, Member, English; Juanita Sundberg, Member, Not from U of 0 Susan Hardwick, Outside Member, Geography

Esta dissertação trata de duas obras autobiográficas escritas por autoras nativas que ganharam reconhecimento na década de 70: Bobbi Lee Indian Rebel (1975), da nativo-canadense Lee Maracle, e The Turquoise Ledge: a Memoir (2010), da nativo-americana Leslie Marmon Silko. A importância destas autoras para a Renascença Nativo-Americana/Canadense é inegável, e cada uma delas contribuiu fazendo uso de estratégias diferentes: enquanto Maracle começou sua carreira com Bobbi Lee Indian Rebel, de cunho autobiográfico, Silko esperou mais de trinta anos para publicar The Turquoise Ledge. A problematização de se ver estas obras pelo olhar estritamente ocidental, ou estritamente nativo, é discutida, assim como o aparentemente inevitável tom político dessas narrativas. Ainda que mais de três décadas separem a publicação das obras selecionadas, perguntas como: Estas obras podem ser consideradas literatura?, Elas têm como principal propósito engrandecer feitos pessoais das autoras?, ou Como essas narrativas contribuem para o empoderamento do povo Nativo? podem nunca chegar a serem respondidas, mas, de fato, incitaram a escrita desta dissertação e nortearam nossa análise / This dissertation brings to the fore two autobiographical works by Native women authors who first gained recognition in the 1970s: Bobbi Lee Indian Rebel (1975), by Native-Canadian Lee Maracle and The Turquoise Ledge: a Memoir (2010), by Native-American Leslie Marmon Silko. These womens undeniable importance to the Native American/Canadian Renaissance is clear, and each of these authors decided to contribute to Native literature using different strategies: while Maracle started her career with Bobbi Lee Indian Rebel, an autobiographical work, Silko waited over thirty years to publish her The Turquoise Ledge. The problematization of seeing either works strictly through Western or strictly through Native perspectives is also addressed here, along with the apparently inevitable political tone present in both narratives. Despite the fact that the two selected works have been written over three decades apart, questions such as: Can these works be considered literature?, Do they have as main purpose to highlight the authors personal accomplishments? or How do they work to empower the Native people? may never be answered, but they did incite the writing of this dissertation and guided our analysis

Esta dissertação trata de duas obras autobiográficas escritas por autoras nativas que ganharam reconhecimento na década de 70: Bobbi Lee Indian Rebel (1975), da nativo-canadense Lee Maracle, e The Turquoise Ledge: a Memoir (2010), da nativo-americana Leslie Marmon Silko. A importância destas autoras para a Renascença Nativo-Americana/Canadense é inegável, e cada uma delas contribuiu fazendo uso de estratégias diferentes: enquanto Maracle começou sua carreira com Bobbi Lee Indian Rebel, de cunho autobiográfico, Silko esperou mais de trinta anos para publicar The Turquoise Ledge. A problematização de se ver estas obras pelo olhar estritamente ocidental, ou estritamente nativo, é discutida, assim como o aparentemente inevitável tom político dessas narrativas. Ainda que mais de três décadas separem a publicação das obras selecionadas, perguntas como: Estas obras podem ser consideradas literatura?, Elas têm como principal propósito engrandecer feitos pessoais das autoras?, ou Como essas narrativas contribuem para o empoderamento do povo Nativo? podem nunca chegar a serem respondidas, mas, de fato, incitaram a escrita desta dissertação e nortearam nossa análise / This dissertation brings to the fore two autobiographical works by Native women authors who first gained recognition in the 1970s: Bobbi Lee Indian Rebel (1975), by Native-Canadian Lee Maracle and The Turquoise Ledge: a Memoir (2010), by Native-American Leslie Marmon Silko. These womens undeniable importance to the Native American/Canadian Renaissance is clear, and each of these authors decided to contribute to Native literature using different strategies: while Maracle started her career with Bobbi Lee Indian Rebel, an autobiographical work, Silko waited over thirty years to publish her The Turquoise Ledge. The problematization of seeing either works strictly through Western or strictly through Native perspectives is also addressed here, along with the apparently inevitable political tone present in both narratives. Despite the fact that the two selected works have been written over three decades apart, questions such as: Can these works be considered literature?, Do they have as main purpose to highlight the authors personal accomplishments? or How do they work to empower the Native people? may never be answered, but they did incite the writing of this dissertation and guided our analysis

"Storied Voices in Native American Texts: Harry Robinson, Thomas King, James Welch and Leslie Marmon Silko" approaches Native American literatures from within an interdisciplinary framework that complicates traditional notions o f literary "origins" and canon. It situates the discussion of Native literatures in a Native American context, suggesting that contemporary Native American writing has its roots in Native oral storytelling traditions. Each of these authors draws on specific stories and histories from his or her Native culture. They also draw on European elements and contexts because these are now part o f Native American experience. I suggest that Native oral tradition is already inherently novelistic, and the stories that lie behind contemporary Native American writing explicitly connect past and present as aspects o f current Native reality. Contemporary Native American writers are continuing an on-going and vital storytelling tradition through written forms. A comparison of the texts o f a traditional Native storyteller, Robinson, with the highly literate novels of King, Welch and Silko, shows how orally told stories connect with the process o f writing. Robinson's storytelling suggests how these stories "theorize" the world as he experiences it; the Native American novel continues to theorize Native experience in contemporary times. Native writers use culturally specific stories to express an on-going Native history. Their novels require readers to examine their assumptions about who is telling whose story, and the traditional distinctions made between fact and fiction, history and story. King's Green Grass. Running Water takes stories from Western European literary traditions and Judeao-Christian mythology and presents them as part of a Native creation story. Welch's novel Fools Crow re-writes a particular episode from history, the Marias River Massacre, from a Blackfeet perspective. Silko's Almanac of the Dead recreates the Mayan creation story o f the Popol Vuh in the context o f twentiethcentury American culture. Each of these authors maintains the dialogic fluidity of oral storytelling performance in written forms and suggests that stories not only reflect the world, but that they create it in the way that Robinson understands storytelling as a form of theory. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

La présente recherche a pour but de procéder à une étude comparative du processus régénératif au cœur de deux romans phares de la fiction autochtone contemporaine, soit Ceremony de Leslie Marmon Silko et Green Grass, Running Water de Thomas King. Trois volets principaux sont examinés : le rôle de la nature en tant que référent culturel dans le processus de régénération des personnages principaux de chaque roman, l’évolution de la quête identitaire dans un environnement post-contact, ainsi que les répercussions de la réactualisation de l’identité de chaque protagoniste sur la communauté à laquelle il appartient. Cette comparaison entre les procédés employés par Silko et King permettront, en un premier temps, d’identifier des éléments de continuité entre les deux auteurs. Ces similarités incluent la centralité de la nature dans la reconnexion des protagonistes avec leur culture et leur identité ainsi que l’emphase sur la nécessité d’une identité hybride dans un environnement post-contact. De plus, la comparaison entre ces deux auteurs issus de deux contextes socio-historiques distincts permet d’isoler certains éléments du contexte propre à chaque roman afin de déterminer le rôle de la réalité autochtone sur la fiction produite à chaque époque. De façon plus spécifique, il sera entre autres question de l’influence de la montée du mouvement environnementaliste euro-américain sur la valeur symbolique du retour à la nature, ainsi que de l’importance grandissante de la classe moyenne autochtone éduquée et de la façon dont ce nouveau phénomène est exprimé dans l’œuvre de King. / This thesis compares the regenerative processes at the heart of two milestone novels of contemporary Native American literature, Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony and Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water. My comparative study will be divided into three main sections: the role of nature as a cultural referent in the main characters’ regenerative processes in each novel, the evolution of the identity quest in a post-contact environment, and finally, the repercussions of the protagonists’ re-actualization of identity on the rest of their community. Through the comparative study of the processes employed by Silko and King with respect to one’s relationship to nature, cultural identity and social relations, I will be able to identify several similarities shared by the two novels, which demonstrate that they belong to the same Native artistic continuum. These resemblances include the central role of nature in reconnecting the protagonists to their identity, as well as a predominant emphasis on the emergence of a hybridized identity in a post-contact environment. Moreover, the comparison of two novels emerging from two different eras of Native American Literature –that of the 1970s and of the 1990s- will allow me to isolate the influence of the cultural context to which each particular work belongs. In doing so, it becomes possible to determine the influence of some transformations in Native lifestyle on the fiction produced at a given time. More specifically, the modifications I chose to focus on include the rise of Euro-American environmentalism on the symbolic value of returning to nature for Natives as well as the increasing presence of middle-class, educated Natives and their representation, mostly present in King’s fiction.

Ecocritical theology relates to American fiction as it connects nature and spirituality. In my development of the term “neo-pastoral” I begin with Virgil’s Eclogues to serve as examples for spiritual and nature related themes. Virgil’s characters in “The Dispossessed” represent people’s alienation from the land. Meliboeus must leave his homeland because the Roman government has reassigned it to their war veterans. As he leaves Meliboeus wonders why fate has rendered this judgment on him and yet has granted his friend Tityrus a reprieve. Typically, pastoral literature represents people’s longing to leave the city and return to the spiritual respite of the country. When Meliboeus begins his journey he does not travel toward a specific geographical location. Because the gods have forced him from his land and severed his spiritual connection to nature he travels into the unknown. This is the starting point from which I develop neo-pastoral threads in contemporary literature and discuss the alienation that people experience when they are no longer connected to a spirit of the land or genius loci. Neo-pastoralism relates Bakhtin’s idea of chronotope and the expansion of the narrative voice of the novel to include the time/space dialogic. Neo-pastoral fiction shows people in their quest to find spirituality in spite of damage from chemical catastrophic events and suggests they may turn to technology as an ideological base to replace religion. The (anti) heroes of this genre often feel no connection with Judeo-Christian canon yet they do not consider other models of spirituality. Through catastrophes related to the atomic bomb, nuclear waste accidents, and the realization of how chemical pollutants affect the atmosphere, neo-pastoral literature explores the idea of apocalypticism in the event of mass annihilation and the need for canonical reformation. The novels explored in this dissertation are John Updike’s Rabbit, Run; Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49; Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer; Don DeLillo’s White Noise; Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead; Toni Morrison’s Paradise; and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.