Papers by Birgit Brander Rasmussen
Transmotion, Jul 31, 2017
Queequeg’s Coffin, 2012
Acknowledgments xi Introduction. " A New World Still in the Making: 1 1. Writing and Colonia... more Acknowledgments xi Introduction. " A New World Still in the Making: 1 1. Writing and Colonial Conflict 17 2. Negotiating Peace, Negotiating Literacies: The Undetermined Encounter with Early American Literature 49 3. Writing in the Conflict Zone: Don Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala's El primer nueva coronica y buen gobierno 79 4. Indigenous Literacies, Moby-Dick, and the Promise of Queequeg's Coffin 111 Afterword 139 Notes 145 Works Cited 185 Index 201
American Literature, Sep 1, 2007
A large canoe with three Iroquois men and a French captive approaches the small settlement of Tro... more A large canoe with three Iroquois men and a French captive approaches the small settlement of Trois Rivières, on the banks of the St. Lawrence River. It is 5 July 1645. Suddenly, those gathered along the shore recognize the Frenchman. Guillaume Cousture, a young man taken captive by the Iroquois and presumed dead, has been brought back alive. As French settlers rush to welcome Cousture, a tall and stately man stands up in the front of the boat and addresses them. He is Kiotseaeton, a well-known Iroquois orator, diplomat, and ambassador of great prestige. He has come to negotiate for peace. His body is covered with beaded strings and belts, known as wampum.1 Exchanged during peace-treaty negotiations, wampum serves, according to a Jesuit missionary in the area, "the same function as writing and contracts among us" (JR, 40:164).2 The wampum that Kiotseaeton brings to this encounter represents the thoughts and indeed the words authorized by the tribal body on whose behalf he speaks and negotiates. This wampum is part of a narrative and documentary tradition that the Iroquois have used in diplomacy for generations.3 To this treaty encounter, the French bring their own mystic media for materializing words: pen, ink, and paper. Just as wampum is more than a cultural artifact, alphabetic script is not simply a record of facts. Both are documentary media and forms of literacy-one printed, one beaded and strung.4 Each emerges out of distinct cultural and textual contexts, but at the moment of this peace negotiation in North America, wampum and alphabetic script intersect in a space where neither is hegemonic. Indeed, this 1645 treaty council represents a mutual attempt by French and Iroquois delegates
UNP - Nebraska Paperback eBooks, Sep 7, 2017
Journal of Transnational American Studies, 2012
American Literature, 2007
A large canoe with three Iroquois men and a French captive approaches the small settlement of Tro... more A large canoe with three Iroquois men and a French captive approaches the small settlement of Trois Rivières, on the banks of the St. Lawrence River. It is 5 July 1645. Suddenly, those gathered along the shore recognize the Frenchman. Guillaume Cousture, a young man taken captive by the Iroquois and presumed dead, has been brought back alive. As French settlers rush to welcome Cousture, a tall and stately man stands up in the front of the boat and addresses them. He is Kiotseaeton, a well-known Iroquois orator, diplomat, and ambassador of great prestige. He has come to negotiate for peace. His body is covered with beaded strings and belts, known as wampum.1 Exchanged during peace-treaty negotiations, wampum serves, according to a Jesuit missionary in the area, "the same function as writing and contracts among us" (JR, 40:164).2 The wampum that Kiotseaeton brings to this encounter represents the thoughts and indeed the words authorized by the tribal body on whose behalf he speaks and negotiates. This wampum is part of a narrative and documentary tradition that the Iroquois have used in diplomacy for generations.3 To this treaty encounter, the French bring their own mystic media for materializing words: pen, ink, and paper. Just as wampum is more than a cultural artifact, alphabetic script is not simply a record of facts. Both are documentary media and forms of literacy-one printed, one beaded and strung.4 Each emerges out of distinct cultural and textual contexts, but at the moment of this peace negotiation in North America, wampum and alphabetic script intersect in a space where neither is hegemonic. Indeed, this 1645 treaty council represents a mutual attempt by French and Iroquois delegates
PMLA, 2022
This essay reads the 1880 Battiste Good Wintercount as a textual conflict zone that brings Indige... more This essay reads the 1880 Battiste Good Wintercount as a textual conflict zone that brings Indigenous oral and pictographic literatures into dialogue with settler-colonial forms like alphabetic script and books to imagine Native futures after militant resistance. With a timeline that goes back to 901 AD, Good issues a dramatic challenge to Western scholarship on the book, writing, and literary history. He rejects requests for simulations of what Gerald Vizenor calls “tragic victimry” with literary innovation and a narrative vision of survivance. Foregrounding the authority of women, Good invokes new and ancient treaties to insist on Indigenous sovereignty. The essay explores how the literary history of Indigenous pictography informs contemporary Native writers, like N. Scott Momaday, and decolonizing struggles like those identified with the hashtags #NoDAPL and #landback. It concludes with a call to interrogate deep structures of coloniality that organize literary studies through ethnocentric conceptions of literacy, genre, period, and time.
PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 2010
It was early morning on Sunday, 9 September 1739. While most South Carolina settlers were prepari... more It was early morning on Sunday, 9 September 1739. While most South Carolina settlers were preparing for church, nearly Two dozen slaves gathered near the Stono River less than twenty miles from Charlestown. After attacking a local store to secure firearms, the group moved south toward Saint Augustine, Florida, swelling in number and spreading terror along the way. The rebels killed more than twenty settlers and set numerous buildings on fire before being defeated by a colonial militia at the Edisto River the following day (Wood 306-26). This unprecedented insurrection rocked the colony to its core and brought about legislation with important implications for literacy in the colonies that became the United States.
… segregation: toward an aesthetics of living …, 2010
... and Olivia's son, Dodie. Her fate embodies Chesnutt's warning that ... more ... and Olivia's son, Dodie. Her fate embodies Chesnutt's warning that such injustice will incur punishment by a higher power because she dies a violent death. Half-way through the novel, Polly is murdered by a burglar who turns out to be Tom Delamere disguised as Sandy, his ...
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Papers by Birgit Brander Rasmussen