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Paper Title: Little Boxes in the Wild: Preserving and Extending the Long and Winding American Frontier

Author: Maya Genis

"The nature traditions of the wilderness and the pastoral are hallmarks of the national investment in the frontier narrative, in which the pioneer is venerated and the dweller is obscured. Cultural texts ranging from the 17th to the 20th centuries illustrate the problematic use of the wilderness and pastoral traditions, as landscapes are cleared out to "create" wilderness and then beautified to reach the pastoral. These nature ideals are employed in several cycles of U.S. history as the quest for land abundance overrides the existence of native populations. I show dialectical representations of "frontiers" as seen through the eyes of the settler and the native, in three distinct areas: early Western colonialism as seen through the writings of John Smith and Walt Whitman in light of Indian Removal; post-WW2 suburbanization as seen through historical texts and the fiction of John Cheever and concurrent gentrification as discussed by bell hooks and Langston Hughes; finally, the cycle is renewed in the late 20th century post-colonial settlement--tourist hot spots--as seen through the writing of Jamaica Kincaid. An exploration of these three major phases of American cultural history indicates that the wilderness and pastoral traditions are tools used in U.S. history and literature to construct and later justify landscape abundance."

Blogs related to paper:

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http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_3196/003/2007/11/apocalytpic_violence_and_relea.html

http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_3196/003/2007/10/columbus_would_never_have_made.html

Favorite Blogs:

http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_3196/003/2007/10/the_pastoral_and_the_mad_tea_p.html

http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_3196/003/2007/09/biophobia_terrorism_from_within.html

http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_3196/003/2007/09/jeff_walls_flooded_grave.html