Rocky Mountain Review 
of Language and Literature

Volume 68, Number 2 
Fall 2014

Articles

Using the short stop-animation film More, I explore the symbiotic link between play studies and utopian studies. Play and utopia may seem like unlikely sidekicks. Utopia is often defined as a static society that is purpose-driven and bounded by strict rules, while play is a spontaneous, rule-breaking activity through which participants may encounter new experiences and ideas. However, I re-assess utopia as an essentially “playful” genre, and argue that play and the utopian imagination are crucial ingredients to disrupting powerful and oppressive systems like those represented in More.

Within the corpus of nineteenth-century Robinson Crusoe variations, considerably few of the texts have women authors, and even fewer feature a female protagonist; however, the rare English female Robinsonades present two noteworthy literary contributions. First, the earlier texts reposition the domestic component from a marginal concern to a central role within the imperial narrative. Second, later texts also challenge Victorian domestic ideology and develop a female protagonist who retains feminine characteristics in combination with the intellectual abilities and physical skills associated with men. These female “Crusoes” capably negotiate the domestic and the adventure spheres as well as create a new amount of the feminine.

While both the queer and the disabled body have been marginalized for their supposed incoherence and even immorality, Riva Lehrer’s creative non-fiction essay, “Golem Girl Gets Lucky,” and Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues (1993) evince how these qualities are universal to all embodiment. Through these works, I destabilize the myth of the autonomous self and initiate a particularized study of queer/crip kinship patterns, improvisatory systems of connection that adhere and reform across bodily and/or psychic scars. Thus, scars become not only evidence of wounding, but also new surfaces on which to develop community and intimacy within systemic violence and oppression.

La misión evangelizadora de los jesuitas en el sur de Chile durante el siglo XVII se caracterizó principalmente como una labor de mediación para la resolución del conflicto bélico entre mapuches y españoles. La propuesta de una guerra defensiva desarrollada por el sacerdote jesuita Luis de Valdivia permitió una instancia inaudita de negociación que dio pie a una serie de transformaciones culturales y religiosas de manera bidireccional. Los encuentros entre los mapuches y los españoles en una de las periferias más extremas de la colonia española permitieron dinámicas de resistencia, negociación y movilidad cultural.

Passionnée depuis l’enfance par la minéralogie et la paléontologie, George Sand porte à ces sciences une extrême attention, autant scientifique que poétique. Tout comme Jules Verne, dont elle était l’amie, elle voue une passion pour les mondes souterrains et leurs représentations, comme en témoigne la parution quasi-concomitante, chez le même éditeur Jules Hetzel de Laura, voyage dans le cristal, en janvier 1864, pour Sand, et Voyage au centre de la terre, en décembre 1864, pour Verne. Une analyse bachelardienne des romans, sous le prisme de La terre et les rêveries de repos, montrera la prégnance du poétique, voire du mysticisme, dans la description scientifique, chez les deux écrivains.

Reviews

Reviews are published in alphabetical order according to the name of the author reviewed.

Una del Oeste, by José Javier Abasolo. 
Reviewer: Ricardo Landeira

Literary Form as Postcolonial Critique, by Katherine Burkitt. 
Reviewer: Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

Ethics of Liberation in the Age of Globalization and Exclusion, by Enrique Dussel. 
Reviewer: Andrew DuMont

The Mobile Story: Narrative Practices with Locative Technologies, by Jason Farman, ed. 
Reviewer: Elena Foulis

Dying Modern: A Meditation on Elegy, by Diana Fuss. 
Reviewer: Joy Landeira

The Handbook of Spanish Second Language Acquisition, by Kimberly L. Geeslin. 
Reviewer: John M. Ryan

Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger, by Stephen H. Grant. 
Reviewer: Jeffery Moser

Rebozos de Palabras: An Helena María Viramontes Critical Reader, by Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, ed. 
Reviewer: Elena Foulis

MFA vs. NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction, by Chad Harbach, ed. 
Reviewer: Michelle Villanueva

Indios, by Linda Hogan. 
Reviewer: Sravani Biswas

Cultural Geographies: An Introduction, by John Horton and Peter Kraftl. 
Reviewer: Heike Henderson

Human Rights Discourses in a Global Network: Books beyond Borders, by Lena Khor. 
Reviewer: Amy Lynn Klemm

International Perspectives on Chicana/o Studies, by Catherine Leen and Niamh Thornton, eds. 
Reviewer: Elena Foulis

Think About It: Critical Skills for Academic Writing, by John Mauk, Jayme Stayer, and Karen Mauk. 
Reviewer: Elena Foulis

Shakespeare and the Culture of Romanticism, by Joseph M. Ortiz (ed). 
Reviewer: Ruth M.E. Oldman

Le (néo)colonialisme littéraire: Quatre romans africains face à l’institution littéraire parisienne (1950-1970), by Vivan Steemers. 
Reviewer : Benjamin Hiramatsu Ireland

Narcopolis, by Jeet Thayil. 
Reviewer: Shane Gomes

Ingrid Jonker: Poet under Apartheid, by Louise Viljoen. 
Reviewer: Jeffery Moser

Thrill of the Chaste: The Allure of Amish Romance Novels, by Valerie Weaver-Zercher. 
Reviewer: Lorie Sauble-Otto

Imaginary Citizens: Child Readers and the Limits of American Independence, 1640-1868, by Courtney Weikle-Mills. 
Reviewer: Thomas Fair

Object Lessons, by Robyn Wiegman. 
Reviewer: Sarah E. Cornish

Kafka Translated: How Translators Have Shaped Our Reading of Kafka, by Michelle Woods. 
Reviewer: Ingo Stoehr