Title: Colonial mediascapes : sensory worlds of the early Americas /
Authors: Cohen, Matt, 1970-
Year: 2014
Subjects: Indians of North America Communcation.; Indians of Mexico Communication.; Indians of South America Communication.; First contact of aboriginal peoples with Westerners America History; Communication America History; Literacy America History; Books and reading America History; Oral tradition America History; Indians of North America Communication.; Oral tradition America x History; Books and reading America x History; Literacy America x History; First contact of aboriginal peoples with Westerners America x History; United States History; Great Britain Colonies America.; Spain Colonies America.
Abstract: "In colonial North and South America, print was only one way of communicating. Information in various forms flowed across the boundaries between indigenous groups and early imperial settlements. Natives and newcomers made speeches, exchanged gifts, invented gestures, and inscribed their intentions on paper, bark, skins, and many other kinds of surfaces. No one method of conveying meaning was privileged, and written texts often relied on nonwritten modes of communication. Colonial Mediascapes examines how textual and nontextual literatures interacted in colonial North and South America. Extending the textual foundations of early American literary history, the editors bring a wide range of media to the attention of scholars and show how struggles over modes of communication intersected with conflicts over religion, politics, race, and gender. This collection of essays by major historians, anthropologists, and literary scholars demonstrates that the European settlement of the Americas and European interaction with Native peoples were shaped just as much by communication challenges as by traditional concerns such as religion, economics, and resources."--
Contents: Dead metaphor or working model? : "the book" in Native America / Germaine Warkentin -- Early Americanist grammatology : definitions of writing and literacy / Andrew Newman -- Indigenous histories and archival media in early modern Great Lakes / Heidi Bohaker -- The manuscript, the quipu, and the early American book : Don Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala's Nueva corónica y buen gobierno / Birgit Brander Rasmussen -- Semiotics, aesthetics, and the Quecha concept of quilca / Galen Brokaw -- "Take my scalp, please!" : colonial mimesis and the French origins of the Mississippi tall tale / Gordon M. Sayre -- Brave new worlds : the first century of Indian-English encounters / Peter Charles Hoffer -- Howls, snarls, and musket shots : saying "this is mine" in colonial New England / Jon Coleman -- Hearing wampum : the senses, mediation, and the limits of analogy / Richard Cullen Rath -- Writing as "khipu" : Titu Cusi Yupanqui's account of the conquest of Peru / Ralph Bauer -- Christian Indians at war : evangelism and military communication in the Anglo-French-Native borderlands / Jeffrey Glover -- The Algonquian word and the spirit of divine truth : John Eliot's Indian library and the Atlantic quest for a universal language / Sarah Rivett.