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This paper discusses the rethinking of the American West in Francisco Cantú’s recently published memoir, The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border (2018). Written by a former U.S. Border Patrol agent, Cantú’s text chronicles the protagonist’s journey along the U.S.–Mexico continental border, from Arizona to Texas, during and after his 2008–2012 Border Patrol service. Like most memoirs, it straddles the private and the public and produces diverse and multiple subject positions. As he articulates his experience both from the perspective of a law enforcer and as an emotionally involved immediate observer of hazards and horrors of undocumented immigration and the bordering practices that “resignify human body with indifference, ” Cantú inevitably brings into conversation the legal and the spatial, juxtaposing the border, a geopolitical, historically constructed project crisscrossed by economic (both legal and illegal) investments in the land, to the human reality of the borderlands, an ambiguous contact zone shaped by multicultural and multigenerational memory, oral tradition, and a spiritual correlation between people and place. Drawing upon Jane Danielewicz’s view of the memoir as a genre whose function is not only personal or expressive but also public, with a potential to challenge cultural master narratives, create opportunities for political or social action, and provoke change, the paper argues that Cantú’s text itself functions as a contact zone as it negotiates subjectivity primarily in relational terms. Turning private lives of immigrants from abstractions into subjects of public discourse by adding a personal face to the human tragedy produced by the global “economic apartheid, ” it exposes contested cultural narratives and provides new perspectives to both the ongoing border fencing and immigration debate and the human reality of the contemporary West.

Publikacija sadrži uvod, sedam glavnih poglavlja, zaključak, popis citirane literature, kazalo imena i pojmova i bilješku o autorici. Osnovni je cilj studije ukazati na modalitete književne (de)konstrukcije ženskog subjektiviteta i nove mogućnosti čitanja američke fikcionalne proze s prijelaza iz 19. u 20. stoljeće. Metodološki ona se zasniva na povijesno-feminističkom i kulturološkom pristupu, pri čemu u prvom redu slijedi neke od postavki suvremene angloameričke feminističke kritike, od društveno-ideoloških do dekonstrukcijskih. U prvom poglavlju autorica izlaže svoja teorijska, književno-povijesna i žanrovska polazišta te ukazuje na potrebu revizionističkog čitanja američke fikcionalne proze s kraja 19. stoljeća u skladu s osnovnim postavkama povijesno-feminističkog pravca, prema kojemu je u navedenom razdoblju upravo proza, kao diskurzivna praksa koja odražava dominantne društvene tokove, kulturu i politička pitanja, bila važno sredstvo kojim je dominantni ideološki aparat stvarao i umnažao mitove, definirajući ženin subjektivitet i njezin marginalizirani položaj. Drugo poglavlje analizira dva ideološka diskursa prisutna u američkom društvu s kraja 19. st., ideologiju Drugog i ideologiju odvojenih sfera, te povijesni i društveni (politički i kulturni) američki kontekst razdoblja na prijelazu iz 19. u 20. st. U trećem se poglavlju razmatraju prikazivačke konvencije realizma i naturalizma, onodobna obilna američka produkcija sentimentalnih ženskih romana te isprepletenost popularnih (niskih) i elitnih (visokih) oblika romana potrage i njegove feminizirane varijante. Poglavlja IV–VII donose detaljnu analizu romana Buđenje (The Awakening, 1899.) Kate Chopin, Sestra Carrie (Sister Carrie, 1900.) Theodorea Dreisera, Kuća veselja, (The House of Mirth, 1905.) Edith Wharton i Moja Ántonia (My Ántonia, 1918.) Wille Cather.

The paper draws upon the controversy over the use of indigenousrelated sports emblems that has recently sparked a series of protests across the United States against the "Washington Redsk*ns" name and imagery. It focuses on the visual aspect of the debate, tracing the whitesupremacist foundations of the Washington team's insignia to the institutional construction of Native identity through popular Indian Head Pennies and Buffalo Nickels in the period between 1859 and 1938. Pointing at the seemingly paradoxical discrepancy between the minted messages and the systematic political, legal, and military invasion on American Indian sovereignty in that period, it proceeds to deconstruct the paradox by exposing the numismatic pictorial language as a manifestation of the same ideological project and the configurations of power that have remained unchanged to this day. The continued circulation of indigenous-based iconography in the contemporary American context shows that the same cultural imagination continues to serve not only as a powerful rationale for European America's historical, national, and political narrative but also as a form of "anticonquest" that both obscures and enacts the established formulas of colonial domination and control. Observing the alterations of the "Washington Redsk*ns" logo design across some of the key moments of the second half of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century – the McCarthy era, the Civil Rights Movement, post 9/11 sentiment, the global financial crisis, the campaign against ethnic studies, and the illegal immigration debate – the analysis explores how various forms of national anxiety transcend into identity through the politics of representation. In that light, it regards recent activism against mass- mediated symbolization of indigenous identity as an important 17 arena in which centuries-long hegemonic discourses are contested against new venues of self-determination and internal decolonization.

The article discusses contemporary indigenous poetry, focusing on Wabigoon River Poems (2015) collection by Canadian aboriginal writer David Groulx.

This paper examines the interaction between the physical and the historical in Octavia Butler's Kindred (1979). It focuses on Butler's envisioning of the heroine's body as a site of repressed traumatic memory and its potential to reconstruct the dominant national narrative in both historical and contemporary terms. Acknowledging the universal experience of trauma and its emotional scars, Butler's novel retrieves and rewrites the history of slavery from within the body of the oppressed. Analyzing the slave mentality concomitant to bodily dispossession through inflicted torture and sexual abuse, the paper shows that history is inevitably written in the body itself, emphasizing the fact that bodies interacting with history can never be removed from it. It also explores the de/reconstructive scope of the fantastic genre in conveying the historical immediacy and uncovering the resistance consciousness and its adept subversion of the power structures. Finally, it highlights the significance of the novel's time frame, characters' names, and geographic sites as the nexus between the individual and national history.

This paper examines the correspondence between travel and disease in Native American novels Ceremony (1977) by Leslie Marmon Silko and Tracks (1988) by Louise Erdrich. Juxtaposing the novels' protagonists, Tayo and Pauline, it focuses on the detrimental effects of their dislocation from the tribal matrix and their contact with the dominant world. Whereas Tayo's identity quest is centripetal and in itself represents a "homing--‐in" journey, a ceremony of convalescence from the painful emotional ramifications of World War II trauma and his alienation from the Pueblo tradition, Pauline's voyage to the all-white community of Argus leads to a complete mental imbalance and disintegration. In her attempt to assimilate, Pauline becomes obsessed with racial purity and Christianity, and engages in malicious and dysfunctional behavior. Struggling to deny her Anishinaabe background and purge herself from "its evils, " she harms and kills other people, starts practicing bizarre rituals of asceticism and bodily mortification, and ultimately descends into madness. Observing the two characters' different understanding of indigenous epistemologies, and interpreting their bodies as constructs "imprinted by history" and "disciplinary discursive practices, " the paper attempts to expose the correlation between disease and colonization, i.e. healing and decolonization.

The texts before you were, in their shorter version, originally presented at the inaugural symposium of the Croatian Association for American Studies (Hrvatsko udruženje za američke studije), established in 2010 with the aim of bringing together researchers and academics in Croatian institutions of higher education that teach, research and are working towards their degrees in different fields comprising American Studies.

U radu se istražuje hibridna i višeglasna struktura romana "Cogewea the Half Blood: A Depiction of the Great Montana Cattle Range" (1927) Mourning Dove primjenom Bahtinove kulturalne semiotike te naratološke, postkolonijalne, feminističke metodologije i metodologije indijanskih studija. Tekst ove starosjedilačke autorice odaje strategije mimikrije i anti-imperijalnog prijenosa uočljive kroz minimalne pomake karakterizacijsko-sadržajne matrice popularnih zapadnih žanrova kojima se autoričin starosjedilački glas emancipira kako od doiminantnog diskursa indijanstva tako i od autoriteta urednika Lucullusa McWhortera.

Rad razmatra društveno-politički kontekst nastanka suvremene starosjedilačke književnosti i discipline indijanskih studija, pri čemu su u žarištu analize djela začetnika indijanskog intelektualnog aktivizma Vinea Delorie Jr.-a Custer je umro za tvoje grijehe: indijanski manifest (Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, 1969.) i Iza puta prekršenih sporazuma: indijanska deklaracija nezavisnosti (Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of Independence, 1974.) te odnos i temeljne razlike između starosjedilačkog pokreta stvorenog koncem šezdesetih i Pokreta za građanska prava. Uz povijesni pregled starosjedilačkog aktivističkog pokreta, autorice ukazuju na kronologiju pravno- političkih odnosa indijanskih plemena i američke Vlade te pružaju prikaz položaja starosjedilačkih zajednica u drugoj polovici 20. st.

This paper interprets Louise Erdrich’s novel Tracks in light of Louis Owens’ frontier theory. According to Owens, the concept of the frontier encompasses not just the physical terrain but also the psychological and cognitive aspects of the colonial encounter. It is a dangerously unstable, indeterminate and hybridized space that refuses to be confined through boundaries and serves as a dynamic zone of resistance. Utilizing the conventions of magical realism and the grotesque, Louise Erdrich's novel Tracks (1988) creates such a frontier zone in which the discourse of hegemony is estranged, and power relations reworked and reversed.

The rapid digital revolution and the corresponding paradigm shift towards the hypermedia that we have been witnessing over the last few years have had a substantial impact on traditional monolythic media platforms such as literature. The universal literary merits -- the promise of entertainment and intellectual and emotional stimulation -- are being increasingly challenged by the much more dynamic and appealing multimedia versions of the same. The continuing growth of computer- mediated forms of communication has permeated almost every aspect of our lives, including our professional work. My presentation will examine the positive effects of that process, focusing on the methodological potential and benefits of utilizing the video sharing tool YouTube in American Literary Studies. I will present some audio-visual materials that can effectively be incorporated into the classroom at both undergraduate and graduate levels to stimulate discussion and the students' response to texts from various literary periods. Spanning a diversity of topics and contemporary issues -- from history, identity, multiculturalism, consumerism to human trafficking, globalization, and ecology -- these materials prove that the emerging digital technologies do not necessarily render the literary medium less viable, but, on the contrary, can serve as a valuable educational supplement that points to its charm and lasting relevance.

This paper discusses the somewhat oxymoronic tie between Ulysses' poststructuralist effect and its structural design. Observing the changes in the linguistic register and the corresponding syntactical modes in various episodes of the novel, it points at a gradual reduction of the authorial voice and its ultimate displacement by the text itself. Whereas the first episodes of the novel are controlled by a public narrative voice, an obvious narrative switch occurs in the episode “Lestrygonians”, in which the narrative persona turns from heterogdiegetic to homodiegetic, almost blending with the protagonist Leopold Bloom. That becomes even more obvious in the chapter “Scylla and Charybdis”, marked by a complete substitution of the public narrator with an internal focalizer. As the role of the narrative agent shifts from the diegetic to the mimetic pole, its authority gets restricted and subjected to the textual voice. The process of reading Ulysses thus necessarily comprises both the hermeneutic and the formal plane as the text develops its technical codes and conventions, forcing its own structure upon itself. Our interdisciplinary approach to Joyce’s text employs various methods for quantitative assessment, including syntax analysis, tokenization, part-of-speech tagging and corpus text analysis. The analysis utilizes two computer tools for analyzing corpora – Treetagger and Ngram Statistics Package (NSP) – to emphasize the structural discrepancies, differences in lexical units and lemma usage between various sections of the novel.

Zbog rastućeg opsega i heterogenosti suvremenog starosjedilačkog književnog korpusa, ova knjiga ne pretendira biti njegov sveobuhvatan pregled, nego u razmatranje uzima nekoliko ključnih i reprezentativnih djela—romane Ceremonija (Ceremony, 1977.) i Pripovjedač (Storyteller, 1981.) Leslie Marmon Silko, Ljubavna magija (Love Medicine, 1984.) i Tragovi (Tracks, 1988.) Louise Erdrich te Medicine River (1989.) i Zelena trava, voda koja teče (Green Grass, Running Water, 1993.) Thomasa Kinga. U žarištu su čitanja koncepti pripovijedanja, narodnosti i hibridnosti kojima želimo ukazati na poetološku i epistemološku posebitost suvremenog starosjedilačkog pisma. U prvom poglavlju razmatramo distinktivna poetološka obilježja starosjedilačke književnosti te problematiku njezine klasifikacije i njezina određenja prema dominantnom književno-kritičkom kanonu. Prikazom teorijskih pristupa Arnolda Krupata, Jamesa Rupperta i Andrewa Wigeta te predstavnika starosjedilačke književne kritike Louisa Owensa, Grega Sarrisa i Geralda Vizenora ukazujemo na aplikabilnost postkolonijalnog koncepta hibridnosti i Bahtinova dijalogizma pri interpretaciji suvremenog starosjedilačkog pisma. Kroz komponente jezika, srodstva, pripovijedanja, kolektivnog pamćenja, mjesta i ceremonija razmatramo recentne teorijsko-metodološke priloge disciplini indijanskih studija—model etičke kritike autora antologije Reasoning Together (2008.) Craiga Womacka, Roberta Warriora, Jacea Weavera, Daniela Heatha Justicea i Christophera Teutona te matricu narodnosti Toma Holma, Diane Pearson i Bena Chavisa. U drugom poglavlju analiziramo tehnike konceptualnog posredovanja u romanima Ceremonija i Pripovjedač Leslie Marmon Silko. Pritom u središte interesa stavljamo strategije hibridnosti i subverzije dominantnog žanra elementima narodnosti utkanim u kompoziciju i kronotoptih djela. Dok roman Ceremonija promatramo s obzirom na efekt recepcijske reorijentacije stvoren razgradnjom konvencija romana potrage i alijenacije, dijalog s dominantnom tradicijom u romanu Pripovjedač iščitavamo kroz otklon tog djela od zapadnog koncepta autorstva i autobiografije te njegove formalno-stilske preinake narativne teksture. U trećem poglavlju u razmatranje uzimamo "protupripovijesti" Louise Erdrich i Thomasa Kinga. Odnos prema povijesti osnovno je polazište čitanja Erdrichina romana Tragovi. U žarištu je pritom ponešto sporan odnos postmodernog pisma prema povijesti, ali i prema postkolonijalnoj književnosti i teoriji. Motrenjem signala magijskog i grotesknog realizma te diskursa ludila ukazujemo na Erdrichine postmoderne strategije povijesnog i epistemološkog prijenosa. Uz postmoderne metodološke protokole Jean-Françoisa Lyotarda, Linde Hutcheon, Ihaba Hassana, Andreasa Huyssena i Davida Lodgea, tumačenja magijskog realizma Lois Parkinson Zamore, Wendy B. Faris, Thea D'Haena i Stephena Slemona te teorija mimikrije i trećeg prostora Homia Bhabhe, antikolonijalni karakter Erdrichinih tekstova otkrivamo i pomoću koncepta varalice. Dok u romanu Tragovi tipologiju varalice sagledavamo kroz karakterizaciju pojedinih likova pomoću Bahtinova tumačenja karnevala i menipejske satire te diskursa varalice Geralda Vizenora, pri čitanju romana Ljubavna magija polazimo od postmodernih strategija fabularne atomizacije, jezične igre i recepcijskog dijaloga. Odnos starosjedilačkog pisma i povijesti dalje razmatramo kroz polemičke tekstove Thomasa Kinga: Izmišljanje Indijanca: bjelački likovi, starosjedilačka usmena književnost i suvremeni starosjedilački pisci (Inventing the Indian: White Images, Native Oral Literature, and Contemporary Native Writers, 1986.), Sva moja rodbina (All My Relations, 1990.), Istina o pričama: starosjedilački narativ (The Truth about Stories: A Native Narrative, 2003.), "Godzilla vs. Postcolonial" (2004.), Nezgodan Indijanac: čudan izvještaj o starosjedilačkom narodu iz Sjeverne Amerike (The Inconventient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America, 2012.) te njegove romane Medicine River i Zelena trava, voda koja teče, ističući pritom značaj retoričkog suvereniteta indijanskog pisma. Naglašavanjem empirijske, formativne i prokreativne funkcije pripovijedanja u indijanskim kulturama analiziramo Kingove tehnike rekonceptualizacije zapadne monološke linearne povijesti uvođenjem narativnog višeglasja i starosjedilačke hermeneutike zajednice. Promatrajući elemente fantastičnog i nadrealističnog te trop varalice, kojim Kingovi romani u humoristično-parodičnom tonu "komadaju" veliku priču osvajanja i njezine formativne mitove, ukazujemo na vitalnu ulogu pripovijesti kao nositelja kulturnog ozdravljenja i univerzalne povijesne istine. U četvrtom poglavlju prikazujemo društveno-politički kontekst nastanka suvremene starosjedilačke književnosti i discipline indijanskih studija. Razmatramo djela začetnika indijanskog intelektualnog aktivizma Vinea Delorie Jr.-a Custer je umro za tvoje grijehe: indijanski manifest (Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, 1969.) i Iza puta prekršenih sporazuma: indijanska deklaracija nezavisnosti (Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of Independence, 1974.) te odnos i temeljne razlike između starosjedilačkog pokreta stvorenog koncem šezdesetih i Pokreta za građanska prava. Uz povijesni pregled starosjedilačkog aktivističkog pokreta, prvi dio ovog poglavlja uključuje i kronologiju pravno-političkih odnosa indijanskih plemena i američke Vlade te prikaz položaja starosjedilačkih zajednica u drugoj polovici 20. st. Potom analiziramo književni izričaj Johna Trudella—njegovu hibridnu, eksperimentalnu i nadasve angažiranu poeziju te specifičnu "holističnu" filozofiju koju određujemo kao "spoj starosjedilačke duhovnosti i suvremene ekonomsko-političke analize". U trećem dijelu poglavlja izdvajamo djela Mir, snaga, pravičnost: starosjedilački manifest (Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto, 1999.) i Wasáse: starosjedilački putovi djelovanja i slobode (Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom, 2005.) Taiaiake Alfreda, istaknutog suvremenog aktivista iz akademskih redova. Važnost mentalne i psihološke dekolonizacije te regeneracije starosjedilačkih kultura povratkom tradicionalnim duhovnim vrijednostima, ali i mogućnosti iznalaženja zajedničke filozofije opstanka indijanskih i neindijanskih kultura neke su od tema koje zahvaćamo analizom tekstova tog, kako ga mnogi nazivaju, Deloriina nasljednika. Naposljetku, usporedbom teorijskih postavki Craiga Womacka, Roberta Warriora, Deaniela Heatha Justicea, Jacea Weavera i Elizabeth Cook-Lynn suvremenu starosjedilačku književnost i teoriju određujemo kao neizostavan aspekt aktivizma kojim starosjedilački narodi ispisuju svoj glas i opstanak u kulturno-povijesnom prostoru Amerike i aktivno mijenjaju svijet.

The paper examines the relation between the fantastic and the (post)colonial character of Louise Erdrich's novel Tracks. Employing the fantastic through magical realism, the discourse of madness and the grotesque, Erdrich devised a polyphonic text that effectively questions and destabilizes the consistency of colonial symbols and identity constructs. This narrative technique is observable in the characterization of Pauline Puyat, one of the main protagonists and narrators in the novel, whose assimilation in the Western culture results in her complete renouncement and hatred of her indigenous heritage and identity. Yet, Pauline's identification with the dominant worldview, her obsession with Christianity and racial purity, manifests itself as mental illness and (self)destructive behavior that includes bizarre acts of penance, neglect of hygiene and a morbid wish to kill her unborn baby to save it from sin. Ironically, through her attempt to cleanse herself of her paganism, Pauline becomes spiritually, physically and morally the most unclean character in the novel. Mortifying and terrorizing her body to protect herself from the evils of nature and the temptations of instincts – sources of shame, corruption and barbarity, Pauline attests to the fact that the body is a construct "imprinted by history" and "disciplinary discursive practices" , the "‘text’ on which colonisation has written some of its most graphic and scrutable messages" . Yet, Pauline's rigid understanding of faith leads her not only to insanity but also to sin. In spite of her Christian creed and her sharp detachment from her heathen roots, she manifests occult tendencies and supernatural abilities that she regularly uses for evil purposes - to commit murder, adultery, deception, and various malicious acts. Possessed by magic and visions, she uses satanic methods to serve Christ's purpose, thus exhibiting the very traits that she claims to defy. Conflating Ojibwa and Judeo-Christian cosmologies by blurring the boundaries between the real, mythic, magical and supernatural, Erdrich exposes the inconsistency of Pauline's missionary pursuit, and highlights wickedness, selfishness, and immorality as its main features. Thereupon, using magical elements, she disturbs the coherence of the imperial dogma and its evangelical tools. This narrative effect concurs with Homi Bhabha's definition of hybridity – the reversal of "the effects of the colonialist disavowal, so that other 'denied' knowledges enter upon the dominant discourse and estrange the basis of its authority - its rules of recognition" . Drawing upon Bhabha's hybridity theory and Mikhail Bakhtin's conceptualization of the grotesque, the analysis additionally juxtaposes the use of the fantastic in Erdrich's text to its commitment to epistemological translation, historical revisionism, cultural memory and emancipation.

This reading of Louise Erdrich's novel Tracks (1988) focuses on the debated relationship between postmodern literature and history, as well as postcolonial theory. Observing the signals of magical realism, Rabelaisian grotesque and the discourse of madness, as evinced through the characterization of Pauline Puyat, the analysis attempts to demonstrate Erdrich's postmodern strategies of historical revisionism and anti- imperial translation, and the concomitant synthesis of the postmodern and postcolonial perspectives. The discourse of madness identifies the wickedness, selfishness and corruption as the main features of Pauline's missionary pursuit, exposes the imperialist construct of indigenous identity, as well as the psycho-physical perils of its internalization. By problematizing and pluralizing the real in a typically postmodern way, drawing upon the techniques of magical and grotesque realism, the novel offers an ironical transcription of the binary dogma on racial purity and superiority. Attributing Pauline with the very traits that she claims to defy, Erdrich juxtaposes this dogma with the rhetoric of conversion, challenging the dominant epistemology, its colonial historiography, symbols and strategies.

The paper examines the generic hybridity in Leslie Marmon Silko's Storyteller (1981) as a tool for synchronizing the private and the public history, emphasizing a synecdochic relationship between the individual and the communal, as well as the necessity of the Western readers' conceptual reorientation for appreciating that relationship. Through its shift towards oral discourse, Silko?s novel stretches the horizon of the Western genre, challenging its narrative, authorial and receptional conventions, as well as its epistemology of space and time. Infusing a sense of collectivity into the traditional Western concept of personal narrative, Silko draws upon Laguna sacred history, delineating the importance of storytelling in shaping and preserving the communal identity. Transgressing the border between the fictional and the real, the secular and the mythic, Storyteller also conveys the power of storytelling to transcend material boundaries of the real and shape them at the same time. The analysis pays special attention to permutations, as a stylistic device that converges postmodern techniques with oral storytelling in order to exhibit the variability of the oral discourse and translate it into written form.

Premda je posljednjih desetljeća doživjela iznimnu popularnost, književnost američkih Indijanaca još uvijek je relativno nepoznata i neistražena u hrvatskim razmjerima. Kroz romane Cogewea, the Half-Blood: A Depiction of the Great Montana Cattle Range (1927.) Mourning Dove, Ceremony (1977.) i Storyteller (1981.) Leslie Marmon Silko te Love Medicine (1984.) i Tracks (1988.) Louise Erdrich, ova disertacija želi osvijetliti distinktivna poetološka i epistemološka obilježja te književnosti, uključujući i neke novije teorijske dvojbe vezane uz njezinu klasifikaciju i interpretaciju. Osnovno je uporište studije diskurs hibridnosti kao najistaknutija strategija subverzije i anti-imperijalnog prijenosa u navedenim tekstovima. Analiza također prati evoluciju ženske indijanske književne tradicije kroz njezina tri ključna stadija -- narjanije razdoblje, tzv. "indijansku renesansu" i suvremeni postmoderni trend. Dok ranija djela osporavaju Zapadne sustave prikazivanja kroz mimikriju sentimentalnog i western žanra (Cogewea), romana potrage (Ceremony) i tradicije autobiografije (Storyteller), romani Louise Erdrich ne razgrađuju dominantnu konvenciju, već stvaraju dijalog između Zapadne i indijanske ontologije. Uprkos tomu, takva prilagodba hibridnosti u Erdrichinim tekstovima ne priječi njihov politički potencijal. Rabeći heteroglosiju, grotesku, magijski realizam, diskurs ludila i signaturu varalice na tipično postmoderan način, Tracks i Love Medicine otvoreno oživljuju povijesne rane, prkose autoritetu kolonijalne metapripovijesti, razvrgavajući njezina značenja, slike i konstrukte identiteta, te vezu između imperijalizma, kapitalističke etike i povijesne amnezije. Ubrizgavajući usmenu tradiciju i oćut kolektivnosti u Zapadni oblik, Mourning Dove, Silko i Erdrich propituju granice dominantnog diskursa iznutra. Na taj način, asimilacijom u dominantne književne paradigme, one pružaju otpor kulturnoj asimilaciji i nestanku svojih naroda u anglo-američkom svijetu.

Polifono ustrojstvo romana Theodorea Dreisera Sister Carrie (1900.) otvara ovo djelo suvremenim postmodernim, kulturalnim i feminističkim čitanjima. Heteroglosija je u ovom romanu postignuta prožimanjem i međusobnim osporavanjem žanrovskih matrica naturalizma i sentimentalnosti i diskursa potrošačke kulture. Dokumentirajući začetke procesa komodifikacije koji je zahvatio Ameriku krajem 19. stoljeća, Dreiser je uočio "iščeznuće zbiljskoga" i anticipirao potrošački apetit kao novu društvenu determinantu. Ukazavši na kontradikciju između tradicionalnog poimanja subjekta i nadolazećih kulturalnih glasova, on je istodobno naznačio preobrazbu ženina položaja i dao definiciju moderne svijesti. Premda je sam ostao vjeran brojnim elementima tradicionalne poetike, upravo takva hijerarhija jezika roman Sister Carrie odvaja od obzora očekivanja njegova vremena i približuje ga suvremenoj recepciji.

Rad analizira lik 'nove žene' u američkom romanu s prijelaza 19. na 20. stoljeće kroz djela: 'The Awakening'(1898.) Kate Chopin, Sister Carrie' (1900.) Theodorea Dreisera, 'The House of Mirth' (1905.) Edith Wharton i 'My Antonia' (1918.) Wille Cather

This master’s thesis analyzes the fight for environmental justice in three works of Linda Hogan – the novels Mean Spirit (1990) and Solar Storms (1995) and the collection of essays Dwellings (1995). It discusses the ways in which the analyzed texts incorporate ecofeminist notions in the Indigenous fight for environmental justice. All three texts depict the everlasting negative impacts of the colonization on the environment, culture, and lifestyle of Native Americans – its damaging physical, mental, and spiritual consequences including the Indigenous peoples’ generational trauma and the alienation from their tradition and their land. The paper argues that Hogan represents the fight for environmental justice as a predominantly female issue informed by Indigenous gynocratic and matrilineal tradition and draws attention to the connection between the oppression of nature and the oppression of women through both linguistic practices and various forms commodification. It also explores the roles of men in the (ecofeminist) fight for environmental justice. Drawing upon ecofeminist principles set by Greta Gaard and Karen J. Warren and the work of the late American Indian studies scholar and author Paula Gunn Allen, this paper argues that Hogan’s texts intertwine the environmental and ecofeminist notions in order to pave the way towards healing from the environmental trauma and restoring and protecting the Indigenous peoples’ bond with their ancestral tradition and their land.

This paper analyzes the animal motif in Edgar Allan Poe’s selected works. It focuses on three animal motifs in four of Poe’s works – the short stories “The Black Cat,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and “Hop-Frog,” and the poem “The Raven.” The paper argues that the three animal motifs, the black cat, the raven, and the orangutan, personify certain elements of the human nature – feelings, emotions, human constructs, phenomena of the human society, and the stages of development of human consciousness – and that some of them can also be analyzed through the socio-historical lens as motifs associated with the oppression of African Americans and the history of slavery.

This paper explores the importance of the narrative perspective in Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories – the horror story “The Tell­Tale Heart,” the adventure story “MS. Found in a Bottle,” and the detective story “The Purloined Letter.” Drawing upon narrative theory, it argues that the narrative perspective is an important aspect of Poe’s literary technique and one of the key instruments in producing the ultimate narrative effect. Even though all three stories employ first­person narration and reflect the conventions of their respective genres – “The Tell­Tale Heart” relies on mystery, murder, and gore, “MS. Found in a Bottle” contains life­or­death situations and the propensity for the unknown, and “The Purloined Letter” describes an unsolvable case ready to be cracked – there are significant differences in the way their narrative voice is constructed and perceived. Unlike “The Tell­Tale Heart,” which is told by an unreliable narrator whose delusion and irrational actions undermine his claim to reliability, the focalization in “MS. Found in a Bottle” presents an unbelievable story through an autodiegetic narrator whose rationality shapes the story’s final effect. Likewise, the homodiegetic narrator in “The Purloined Letter” significantly contributes to the story’s innovative narrative effect. The paper maintains that their narrative perspectives make Poe’s stories worth analyzing as they raise the (still very relevant) questions of credibility and reliability not just in literature but also in every single medium.

This paper analyzes the Gothic elements in Toni Morrison’s neo-slave narrative Beloved (1987). It argues that the main character, Beloved, is the embodiment of the Gothic elements in the novel. In order to justify this claim, the paper first provides an explanation of the Goth-ic genre and its main features along with a definition of the term neo-slave narrative and its connection to the Gothic. The analysis of the novel consists of three parts, each dedicated to Beloved’s different levels of power. Her first and lowest level is her ghost form, when she is only haunting house 124 and causing commotion to her mother, Sethe, and sister, Denver, who live there. The second level is her transformation to human form, which is triggered by her mother’s attempt at finding happiness and moving on from Beloved’s death. At this stage Beloved is adjusting to the life on Earth and testing the abilities of her powers. The last level analyzed in the paper concerns the height of Beloved’s power, but also her demise. Beloved starts to feed off her mother’s life force, which makes her an incredibly powerful being, until she is stopped by Denver and a group of local women from the community, who perform an exorcism that banishes her forever from Cincinnati.

The history of American Indian boarding schools had been mostly unknown until a few decades ago. A recent upsurge of writings on this topic across the United States of America and Canada has brought to light the inside perspective, making the damaging effects of the cultural reprogramming through education that affected thousands of Indigenous children for over a century visible and clear. This thesis explores the issues of alienation, trauma, memory, and identity crisis resulting from the forced removal of Indigenous children and their exposure to mainstream education in off-reservation boarding schools during their formative years. It analyses Debby Dahl Edwardson’s novel My Name is Not Easy (2011) and three nonfictional texts – K. Tsianina Lomawaima’s They Called It Prairie Light (1994), Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton’s memoir Fatty Legs (2010), and Laura Tohe’s No Parole Today (1999). All of these texts re-write/right the history of the boarding-school era by emphasizing the assimilation policy as the central component of Indian residential schools’ programme. They reveal not only the negative but also the positive side of the students’ experience as well as the fact that these schools frequently became sites of resistance and resilience in which the disciplinarians’ rules were subverted and Native identity maintained through students’ mutual support, friendship, and solidarity. Although the students sometimes managed to claim the power of the boarding schools for themselves and even though, despite the government’s efforts to destroy their connections to the tribal communities, many of them returned from school even stronger and with the knowledge of many new skills, effects of the boardingschool trauma and discrimination are felt even today as the lingering issues of depression, suicide, and substance abuse continue to plague Native communities. The final part of this paper looks into those issues and explores the possibility to alleviate them by incorporating cross-cultural knowledge and Indigenous teaching methods in contemporary mainstream school curricula.

This paper analyses central female characters in Theodore Dreiser’s novel Sister Carrie (1900) and Tennessee Williams’s play A Streetcar Named Desire (1947). It argues that both Dreiser’s Carrie and Williams’ Blanche are “fallen women” who act and present themselves as someone they are not. It also contends that in their attempt to escape poverty and the miseries of life, bothcharacters are led by strong desires, but that eventually, they attain the opposite from what they hoped for. Even though, unlike Blanche, whose madness and trajectory of decline reveal that she obviously gets punished for her transgressive behaviour, Carrie gets “rewarded” through her social ascent, Dreiser’s heroine is also indirectly punished as she eventually fails to find happiness and her desires remain unfulfilled. Apart from exploring the relation of these texts to their respective socio-historical backgrounds, the analysis also focuses on elements of naturalism – determinism in particular – that shape their heroines as fragile females in a brutal world ruled by men and define them as victims of circumstances beyond their control.

This master’s thesis provides an analysis of Alice Walker’s novels The Color Purple (1982) and Meridian (1976) in relation to the Civil Rights Movement and its legacy. It discusses the theme of African American female experience of inequality and discrimination in terms of both gender and race. The paper argues that even though their time frames differ, as The Color Purple is set at the beginning of the twentieth century and Meridian reflects the years during and following the Civil Rights Movement, the novels’ main characters share the experience of double oppression by both White supremacist and patriarchal social structures. The Color Purple depicts the trials and tribulations in the life of its protagonist, Celie, who endures mistreatment perpetuated by Black men on a daily basis. Likewise, Meridian depicts racial and gender discrimination in the rural South, exposing Black women’s confinement by the dominant standards of femininity. The analysis of Meridian focuses on three motifs – the story of Marilene O’Shay, the Wild Child, and the Sojourner Tree – through which it exposes the suppression of Black women’s voice and their social marginalization. The paper also examines the ways in which this novel addresses the rift within the Civil Rights Movement, caused by the shift from nonviolent to radical activism, and argues that both novels advance Walker’s concept of “womanism” by celebrating female solidarity, which helps their heroines resolve their marginalized position and overcome racial oppression and patriarchal constraints imposed on Black femininity.

Written as a Festschrift honouring a beloved professor, colleague, and friend, this volume comprises a collection of essays offering a wide array of contemporary approaches to literature, linguistics, and applied linguistics. It covers a variety of topics, ranging from medieval to contemporary literature and language, and explores genres as diverse as fantasy, dystopia, drama, poetry, and film, addressing issues such as post- and transhumanism, age, gender, identity, family, metonymy, and narrative discourse. The diversity of themes and methodologies makes the collection a widely applicable resource in the academic discussion of literature, language, and culture, both as a significant contribution to different philological fields and a useful educational tool for anyone teaching or studying English, Anglophone literature, British, American, and German studies, English as a Second Language, linguistics, cognitive linguistics, and applied linguistics, or conducting research in these fields.

This paper discusses the notion of Otherness in contemporary American immigrant fiction by addressing issues such as ethnic diversity, transnational identities, identity quest, alienation, intergenerational relations within immigrant families, the linguistic, cultural, and social obstacles to assimilation, and the psychological and spiritual impact of dislocation. Employing William Boelhower’s model for interpreting American immigrant literature, developed in his study “The Immigrant Novel as Genre,” and Josip Novakovich and Robert Shapard’s concepts of the “stepmother tongue” and “stepmother-tongue stories,” the paper provides an introduction to American immigrant genre and one of its main concerns – the dynamics of identity and Otherness. The analysis focuses on three American immigrant texts – Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club (1989) and two short stories from the collection Stories in the Stepmother Tongue (2000), “The Winter Hibiscus” by Minfong Ho and “Happiness” by Bharati Mukherjee. It attempts to show that in all three texts, storytelling functions as a powerful narrative strategy that both reveals and resolves the characters’ state of in-betweenness and issues such as identity struggle, cultural and generational gap, (mis)communication, and cultural translation. Whereas The Joy Luck Club introduces the culturally specific narrative technique of the “talk story,” Ho and Mukherjee employ traditional third-person and first-person narrative style, respectively. Nevertheless, in all three texts, storytelling has a crucial role that enables the characters to discover, reclaim, and redefine their identities by voicing their hidden secrets and fears, bridging language barriers, reconstructing their histories and personal life stories, passing on their cultural heritage, and ultimately, celebrating their multiculturalism. By emphasizing the importance of the authors’ personal experiences and life stories in interpreting these texts, the paper also argues that American immigrant fiction is strongly related to the genre of autobiography.

American literature is rich in stories of individualists who succeeded only by their own merits and faced the unknown, unexplored territory also called the frontier. This idea defines the identity of the nation to the point that even long after the literal frontier has been conquered and explored, the American spirit is to find new frontiers. This paper provides a brief sociohistoric overview in order to explain why individualism and self-reliance marked the American identity and what conditions those created in America. It also discusses the problems of society which clashed with those ideals, and thereby created the new moral frontier. The analysis focuses on three works: Walden or, Life in The Woods (1854) and Civil Disobedience (1849) by Henry David Thoreau and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) by Frederick Douglass, all of which uphold the unadulterated idea of individualism and self-reliance. Whereas Thoreau intended to overcome the materialistic, superficial way of modern life and live only on the factual necessities in order to seek out what makes a happy and fulfilled life, Douglass wanted to overcome the hurdles of his life and the life of all other slaves, which he managed to do through his own hard work and expediency. The paper also provides a comparative analysis and synthesis of Thoreau’s and Douglass’s works and their philosophies and differentiates between two kinds of frontier – the internal, or personal, and the external, or the socio-political one – by analysing how those frontiers are overcome by perseverance.