Mary Austin's regionalism
Subtitle: reflections on gender, genre, and geography
By: Heike Schaefer.
Series: Under the sign of nature
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Charlottesville
Language: eng
Number of pages: 290
Subjects: Austin, Mary Hunter, 1868-1934 -- Criticism and interpretation.; Austin, Mary Hunter, 1868-1934 -- Knowledge -- Natural history.; Austin, Mary Hunter, 1868-1934 -- Knowledge -- West (U.S.); Natural history -- West (U.S.) -- History.; Women and literature -- West (U.S.); Regionalism in literature.; Nature in literature.; West (U.S.) -- In literature.
Description: "Best known for The Land of Little Rain, a collection of natural-history essays about the California deserts, the western writer Mary Austin (1868-1934) was a prolific literary figure in the first few decades of the twentieth century. In addition to her essays and short stories, Austin produced novels, poems, and cultural criticism, and was well known as a feminist, political writer, and mystic. Over the past decade a number of Austin's books have been reissued, and her work has been the subject of increasing critical attention." "Heike Schaefer's study complements that renewed interest with a broad appreciation of the complexity of Austin's work. Considering unpublished materials and the full range of Austin's literary and theoretical writing, Mary Austin's Regionalism : Reflections on Gender, Genre, and Geography presents Austin as a significant early twentieth-century author who reworked the traditions of nature writing and women's regionalism to envision a sustainable and democratic American culture. By placing Austin's writing in the context of contemporaneous as well as current critical debates, Mary Austin's Regionalism reveals the insights that Austin's work offers to present discussions of sense of place, the construction of human and nonhuman nature, sustainability, feminist politics, and the dynamics of intercultural communication."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 263-282) and index.
Table of contents: title: "The land sets the limit" : Austin's concept of regionalism; title: Nature writing as regionalist practice; title: Sense of place; title: Deserting the myth of the West : the gender of nature and the nature of gender; title: Who owns the place? : regional development and the future of the nation; title: Regionalist conversations.