Nature's State by Susan Kollin

Nature's State by Susan Kollin

The invention of Alaska in the popular imagination; An engaging blend of environmental theory and literary studies, Nature's State looks behind the myth of Alaska as America's "last frontier," a pristine and wild place on the fringes of our geographical imagination. Susan Kollin traces how this seemingly marginal space in American culture has in fact functioned to alleviate larger social anxieties about nature, ethnicity, and national identity. Kollin pays special attention to the ways in which concerns for the environment not only shaped understandings of Alaska, but also aided U.S. nation-building projects in the Far North from the late nineteenth century to the present era. Beginning in 1867, the year the United States purchased Alaska, a variety of literary and cultural texts helped position the region as a crucial staging ground for territorial struggles between native peoples, Russians, Canadians, and Americans. In showing how Alaska has functioned as a contested geography in the nation's spatial imagination, Kollin addresses writings by a wide range of figures, including early naturalists John Muir and Robert Marshall, contemporary nature writers Margaret Murie, John McPhee, and Barry Lopez, adventure writers Jack London and Jon Krakauer, and native authors Nora Dauenhauer, Robert Davis, and Mary TallMountain.

Susan Kollin is assistant professor of English at Montana State University in Bozeman.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780807826454
ISBN 10	0807826456
Title	Nature's State
Author	Susan Kollin
Series	Cultural Studies Of The United States
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	The University of North Carolina Press
Year published	2001-11-30
Number of pages	248
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.