Narrating North American Borderlands

Combining historical, sociological and political as well as literary methods, the interdisciplinary study analyzes Thomas King's Truth & Bright Water (1999), Howard Frank Mosher's On Kingdom Mountain (2007), and Jim Lynch's Border Songs (2009). The novels narrate North American borderlands and gauge current developments at the Canada-U.S. border.

The study centers on the presentation of the North American borderlands in the works of Canadian Native writer Thomas King's Truth & Bright Water (1999), American writer Howard Frank Mosher's On Kingdom Mountain (2007), and American writer Jim Lynch's Border Songs (2009). The three authors describe the peoples and places in the northeastern, middle and northwestern border regions of the USA and Canada. The novels address important border-oriented aspects such as indigeneity, the borderlands as historic territory and as utopian space, border crossing and transcendence, post-9/11 security issues, social interaction along the border, and gender specifics. The interpretation also examines the meaning of border imaginaries, border conceptualizations, and the theme of resistance and subversion.

Autorentext

Evelyn P. Mayer holds a MA in Conference Interpreting for English and French and a PhD in American Studies from the University of Mainz. She was a visiting scholar and researcher at Carleton University (Canada) and at the Border Policy Research Institute, Western Washington University (USA). She worked as a lecturer at the Universities of Mainz and Saarbrücken and currently teaches at Landshut.

Inhalt
Contents: Canadian-U.S. Border Contexts and the Notion of the Beyond Theoretical Frame: At the Interface of Literatures, Cultures, and Borders Thomas King's Truth & Bright Water: Native De/Bordering Howard Frank Mosher's On Kingdom Mountain: Borderlands as Utopia Jim Lynch's Border Songs: Power Structures, Permeability, and Mobility.