Skip to Main Content

Indigenuity: Native Craftwork and the Art of American Literatures

Online ISBN:
9781469670393
Print ISBN:
9781469670379
Publisher:
University of North Carolina Press
Book

Indigenuity: Native Craftwork and the Art of American Literatures

Caroline Wigginton
Caroline Wigginton
University of Mississippi
Find on
Published online:
23 May 2024
Published in print:
8 November 2022
Online ISBN:
9781469670393
Print ISBN:
9781469670379
Publisher:
University of North Carolina Press

Abstract

For hundreds of years, American artisanship and American authorship were entangled practices rather than distinct disciplines. Books, like other objects, were multisensory items all North American communities and cultures, including Native and settler colonial ones, regularly made and used. All cultures and communities narrated and documented their histories and imaginations through a variety of media. All created objects for domestic, sacred, curative, and collective purposes. In this innovative work at the intersection of Indigenous studies, literary studies, book history, and material culture studies, Caroline Wigginton tells a story of the interweavings of Native craftwork and American literatures from their ancient roots to the present. Focused primarily on North America, especially the colonized lands and waters now claimed by the United States, this book argues for the foundational but often-hidden aesthetic orientation of American literary history toward Native craftwork. Wigginton knits this narrative to another of Indigenous aesthetic repatriation through the making and using of books and works of material expression. Ultimately, she reveals that Native craftwork is by turns the warp and weft of American literature, interwoven throughout its long history.

Contents
Close
This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

Close

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

View Article Abstract & Purchase Options

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Close