Killing The Indian Maiden

Killing the Indian Maiden examines the fascinating and often disturbing portrayal of Native American women in film. Through discussion of thirty-four Hollywood films from the silent period to the present, M. Elise Marubbio examines the sacrificial role of what she terms the "Celluloid Maiden" -- a young Native woman who allies herself with a white male hero and dies as a result of that choice. Marubbio intertwines theories of colonization, gender, race, and film studies to ground her study in sociohistorical context all in an attempt to define what it means to be an American. As Marubbio charts the consistent depiction of the Celluloid Maiden, she uncovers two primary characterizations -- the Celluloid Princess and the Sexualized Maiden. The archetype for the exotic Celluloid Princess appears in silent films such as Cecil B. DeMille's The Squaw Man (1914) and is thoroughly established in American iconography in Delmer Daves's Broken Arrow (1950). Her more erotic sister, the Sexualized Maiden, emerges as a femme fatale in such films as DeMille's North West Mounted Police (1940), King Vidor's Duel in the Sun (1946), and Charles Warren's Arrowhead (1953). The two characterizations eventually combine to form a hybrid Celluloid Maiden who first appears in John Ford's The Searchers (1956) and reappears in the 1970s and the 1990s in such films as Arthur Penn's Little Big Man (1970) and Michael Apted's Thunderheart (1992). Killing the Indian Maiden reveals a cultural iconography about Native Americans and their role in the frontier embedded in the American psyche. The Native American woman is a racialized and sexualized other -- a conquerable body representing both the seductions and the dangers of the frontier. These films show her being colonized and suffering at the hands of Manifest Destiny and American expansionism, but Marubbio argues that the Native American woman also represents a threat to the idea of a white America. The complexity and longevity of the Celluloid Maiden icon -- persisting into the twenty-first century -- symbolizes an identity crisis about the composition of the American national body that has played over and over throughout different eras and political climates. Ultimately, Marubbio establishes that the ongoing representation of the Celluloid Maiden signals the continuing development and justification of American colonialism.

Killing the Indian Maiden examines the fascinating and often disturbing portrayal of Native American women in film. M. Elise Marubbio examines the sacrificial role in which a young Native woman allies herself with a white male hero and dies as a result of that choice. In studying thirty-four Hollywood films from the silent period to the present, she draws upon theories of colonization, gender, race, and film studies to ground her analysis in broader historical and sociopolitical context and to help answer the question, “What does it mean to be an American?” The book reveals a cultural iconography embedded in the American psyche. As such, the Native American woman is a racialized and sexualized other. A conquerable body, she represents both the seductions and the dangers of the American frontier and the Manifest Destiny of the American nation to master it.

Smoke Signals is a historical milestone in Native American filmmaking. Released in 1998 and based on a short-story collection by Sherman Alexie, it was the first wide-release feature film written, directed, coproduced, and acted by Native Americans. The most popular Native American film of all time, Smoke Signals is also an innovative work of cinematic storytelling that demands sustained critical attention in its own right. Embedded in Smoke Signals’s universal story of familial loss and renewal are uniquely Indigenous perspectives about political sovereignty, Hollywood’s long history of misrepresentation, and the rise of Indigenous cinema across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Joanna Hearne’s work foregrounds the voices of the filmmakers and performers—in interviews with Alexie and director Chris Eyre, among others—to explore the film’s audiovisual and narrative strategies for speaking to multiple audiences. In particular, Hearne examines the filmmakers’ appropriation of mainstream American popular culture forms to tell a Native story. Focusing in turn on the production and reception of the film and issues of performance, authenticity, social justice, and environmental history within the film’s text and context, this in-depth introduction and analysis expands our understanding and deepens our enjoyment of a Native cinema landmark.

With fresh appraisals of popular Westerns, this book examines the history of the genre with a focus on definitional aspects of canon, adaptation and hybridity. The author covers a range of largely unexplored topics, including the role of "heroines" in a (supposedly) male-oriented system of film production, the function of the celluloid Indians, the transcultural and transnational history of the first spaghetti Western, the construction of femininity and masculinity in the hybrid Westerns of the 1950s, and the new paths of the Western in the 21st century.

The author uses marriage to examine the social history of New Mexico between 1500 and 1846

Disturbing Indians describes how William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Andrew Lytle, and Caroline Gordon reimagined and reconstructed the Native American past in their work.

Now in its second edition, Gender and Women’s Studies: Critical Terrain provides students with an essential introduction to key issues, approaches, and concerns of the field. This comprehensive anthology celebrates a diversity of influential feminist thought on a broad range of topics using analyses sensitive to the intersections of gender, race, class, ability, age, and sexuality. Featuring both contemporary and classic pieces, the carefully selected and edited readings centre Indigenous, racialized, disabled, and queer voices. With over sixty percent new content, this thoroughly updated second edition contains infographics, original activist artwork, and a new section on gender, migration, and citizenship. The editors have also added chapters on issues surrounding sex work as labour, the politics of veiling, trans and queer identities, Indigenous sovereignty, decolonization, masculinity, online activism, and contemporary social justice movements including Black Lives Matter and Idle No More. The multidisciplinary focus and the unique combination of scholarly articles, interviews, fact sheets, reports, blog posts, poetry, artwork, and personal narratives reflect the vitality of the field and keep the collection engaging and varied. Concerned with the past, present, and future of gender identity, gendered representation, feminism, and activism, this anthology is an indispensable resource for students in gender and women’s studies classrooms across Canada and the United States.

From Sherman Alexie's films to the poetry and fiction of Louise Erdrich and Leslie Marmon Silko to the paintings of Jaune Quick-To-See Smith and the sculpture of Edgar Heap of Birds, Native American movies, literature, and art have become increasingly influential, garnering critical praise and enjoying mainstream popularity. Recognizing that the time has come for a critical assessment of this exceptional artistic output and its significance to American Indian and American issues, Dean Rader offers the first interdisciplinary examination of how American Indian artists, filmmakers, and writers tell their own stories. Beginning with rarely seen photographs, documents, and paintings from the Alcatraz Occupation in 1969 and closing with an innovative reading of the National Museum of the American Indian, Rader initiates a conversation about how Native Americans have turned to artistic expression as a means of articulating cultural sovereignty, autonomy, and survival. Focusing on figures such as author/director Sherman Alexie (Flight, Face, and Smoke Signals), artist Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, director Chris Eyre (Skins), author Louise Erdrich (Jacklight, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse), sculptor Edgar Heap of Birds, novelist Leslie Marmon Silko, sculptor Allen Houser, filmmaker and actress Valerie Red Horse, and other writers including Joy Harjo, LeAnne Howe, and David Treuer, Rader shows how these artists use aesthetic expression as a means of both engagement with and resistance to the dominant U.S. culture. Raising a constellation of new questions about Native cultural production, Rader greatly increases our understanding of what aesthetic modes of resistance can accomplish that legal or political actions cannot, as well as why Native peoples are turning to creative forms of resistance to assert deeply held ethical values.