Articles and Book Chapters by Anna M. Brigido-Corachan
ROCZNIKI HUMANISTYCZNE -Annals of Arts. 72(11):49-63, 2024
Over seventy characters meet, interact, collide, and/or collaborate with one another in Leslie Ma... more Over seventy characters meet, interact, collide, and/or collaborate with one another in Leslie Marmon Silko’s 763-page novel Almanac of the Dead. Radically shaking up Western conceptions of time, history, and space, Silko’s opus follows the criss-crossing trajectories of Indigenous fugitives, actively seeking to document and confront unresolved colonial conflicts throughout the Americas. Silko’s alternative archiving process is ambitious, purposeful, and yet necessarily selective, which results in some historical gaps. This article contends that, in her envisioning of a transborder, trans-Indigenous network of anticolonial resistance, Leslie Silko renders an idealized view of the unruly South as an embryonic and fugitive space of subaltern vindications and hope that is articulated predominantly around Mexico. This is a powerful vision but one which, nonetheless, barely mentions the ongoing Indigenous genocides taking place South of the Mexican border during the 1980s in Guatemala and El Salvador — the tumultuous decade Silko spent
researching and writing her massive novel. To fill such an omission, this article takes account of Silko’s selective incorporation of Southern geographies and peoples. It engages the territories south of the U.S. border that are included in Silko’s Indigenous map of the Americas, and examines the novel’s representation of Guatemalan Mayas and Salvadoran refugees, who appear as anonymous, ghostly shadows in the Mexican chapters.
Western American Literature 59(2):125-152, 2024
In An American Sunrise, published in 2019, Mvskoke poet Joy Harjo considers land redress, migrati... more In An American Sunrise, published in 2019, Mvskoke poet Joy Harjo considers land redress, migration, mobility (in)justice, and home/land building from personal, tribal, and hemispheric perspectives. The Muscogee Creek or Mvskoke were violently removed from their lands in Alabama and Georgia in the early nineteenth century and these processes have deeply shaped their history. Vulnerability and enforced movement have also marked Harjo's personal life trails and travels, as a young teenage mother fleeing her home, and as a writer and artist building new homes and planting community roots in diverse landscapes around New Mexico, Arizona, Hawaii, and Oklahoma. This essay aims to unpack the land-centered mobility strategies displayed by Harjo in An American Sunrise—a collection of poems that render Indigenous homelands as an open refuge for the vulnerable and disenfranchised, and where the reciprocal relations traditionally established between human and more-than-human communities must be strongly acknowledged. Actively contributing to global conversations that are reconsidering human and more-than-human relations and conflicts through an ethics of care and relationality, Harjo examines the effects of Indigenous land eviction and dislocation as a result of both local and global settler colonialist forces that are still shaping the planet in the twenty-first century.
Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures, 2023
This essay considers the main features and status of contemporary Zapotec literature, an "ultrami... more This essay considers the main features and status of contemporary Zapotec literature, an "ultraminor" Indigenous literature in southern Mexico. Tracing its modern emergence through 20th century literary circuits that were preeminently local and politically-rooted, Zapotec literature has taken what Laachir et al. describe as a "groundup and located approach" to literary production and circulation-one that clashes against the globalizing, capitalist, Western-centric relations prevalent in the field of World Literature. Shaping g/local readers and raising cultural and linguistic awareness, Zapotec authors write in their linguistic variant and self-translate their work and worldviews into Spanish-a major Western language with a strong colonialist legacy and presence in the field of World Literature. Although they translate their work as a form of authorial validation within the nation, they primarily seek to nurture autochthonous forms of expression and circulation that are key in Indigenous-led cultural revitalization processes in their territory. As examples of literary worlding, I engage two contemporary Zapotec texts: Víctor de la Cruz's seminal anthology of Zapotec literature Guie' sti' diidxazá/ La flor de la palabra and Natalia Toledo's poem "Ni guicaa T. S. Eliot / A T. S. Eliot," published in her bilingual collection Guie' yaase'/Olivo negro.
Indigenous Journeys, Transatlantic Perspectives. Relational Worlds in Contemporary Native American Literature, 2023
This chapter provides an overview of contemporary Native American writers who engage relationalit... more This chapter provides an overview of contemporary Native American writers who engage relationality and place-based thought in their works and explores anti-colonial methodologies that can set these works in conversation with other literary worlds in the Americas, Africa, and Europe.
In his study Wisdom Sits in Places, Keith Basso describes Western Apache
storytellers as “place-makers,” creators of “place-worlds” through their imagining of alternative possibilities that are given “expressive shape.” Contemporary Native American writers have continued to build “place-worlds” in a relational manner that revises not just Indigenous localities past and present, but other realities, regions, nations, and communities of beings as well. These relational place-worlds are connective, speculative, and critical—and, through comparison, they amplify, reconsider, and reinforce alternative possibilities and expressive shapes.
Indigenous Journeys, Transatlantic Perspectives. Relational Worlds in Contemporary Native American Literature, 2023
“Relational Bodies in Motion: A Trans-Indigenous Reading of Ofelia Zepeda and Irma Pineda’s Place... more “Relational Bodies in Motion: A Trans-Indigenous Reading of Ofelia Zepeda and Irma Pineda’s Place-Based Poetry” by Anna M. Brígido-Corachán. Indigenous Journeys, Transatlantic Perspectives. 2023
In Xilase qui rié di’ sicasi rié nisa guiigu’ / La nostalgia no se marcha como el agua de los ríos and Where Clouds Are Formed, published only a year apart from each other, Indigenous movements on and with the land become decolonizing actions that challenge settler colonial borders and reinscribe other experiences of place in the Americas. Although their authors, Irma Pineda and Ofelia Zepeda, root their poetic works in very specific Native histories and tribal contexts (those of the Binnizá in southwest Mexico and the Tohono O’odham in the Arizona/Mexico border respectively), they are both driven by a relentless commitment to revitalize Indigenous languages and land-based traditions, drawing attention to social in/ justice in their regions. Their poems consider human suffering, racism, migration, environmental awareness, resurgence, and hope through figures in motion that are tied to specific memorial landscapes and communities. For them, the act of walking on the land and with the land becomes a decolonizing strategy to simultaneously vindicate Indigenous mobility rights and more-than-human presence in a borderless North America. In this chapter I examine Pineda’s and Zepeda’s place-based poetic praxis through a transborder, multilingual, and trans-Indigenous lens to amplify Native-based actions and contribute to decolonize Western-based academic disciplines such as American studies or world literature.
Miscelanea. A Journal of English and American Studies, 2022
Drawing from the pictographic traditions and interspecies relations of the Kiowa as well as from ... more Drawing from the pictographic traditions and interspecies relations of the Kiowa as well as from N. Scott Momaday's own theories of language, vision, and the creative imagination, this article aims to broaden our understanding of the memoir The Way to Rainy Mountain as a verbal/visual collaboration between Kiowa painter Alfred Momaday and his son, N. Scott. The stories and images rendered in the book strongly establish the Kiowa in relation to a particular cultural landscape, to visual/oral forms of memory, and to the animals and more-than-human beings that endow them with meaning. To further understand these two sets of relations, the sacred interdependence between images/words and human/more-thanhuman beings in the Kiowa tradition, I first situate the revision of history, place, and ceremony carried out by the Momadays within a tribal-specific intellectual framework. To that end, I consider the visual modes and practices that were traditionally engaged by the Kiowa and which are reinserted by the Momadays in their text as a form of anti-colonial resurgence. Such strategies contributed to decolonizing textual spaces and tribal representation in the late 1960s through their blurring of Western disciplines and through the spiritual interconnection of human, more-than-humans and place at a time when Native American religions were banned. Words and images in The Way to Rainy Mountain are preeminently relational and place-based; they engage with the land and the multiple beings that
The International Journal of Learning in Higher Education 28 (1): 127-138. , 2021
Drawing from the pedagogical framework of multiliteracies, this study examines the potential bene... more Drawing from the pedagogical framework of multiliteracies, this study examines the potential benefits of student-produced BookTube reviews in developing critical thinking skills, literary analysis, and digital literacy when they are incorporated as a final assessment component of literature courses in Higher Education in the place of more traditional formats such as the written essay. Specifically, the study aims to determine whether sufficient instances of argumentation, close-reading, and critical thought take place in BookTube reviews when they incorporate some academic features from video essays, a format that has gained popularity in media and cultural studies in recent years. Twenty-eight sample videos produced by BA students of English Studies at a large university in Spain are analyzed considering their structure, level of argumentative expression, and critical thought. The instruments used were a quantitative and qualitative data analysis of these videos and their text-based scripts, participant observation, and student perceptions gathered through anonymous online questionnaires. A closer examination of these projects shows that videos inspired by generic BookTube reviews on YouTube explored general themes, leaned toward opinion-based statements, and often lacked sufficient academic rigor, whereas audiovisual projects that consciously adhered to the argumentative conventions of traditional essays and video essays evinced a higher degree of critical analysis and were, therefore, more in line with expectations for advanced literary courses in tertiary education. Furthermore, all students producing such work enhanced their digital competence and collaborative skills and achieved a deeper awareness of multiliteracies as a relevant pedagogical framework. The author identifies some key challenges and provides pedagogical recommendations for instructors aiming to introduce BookTube reviews as a pedagogical tool in the classroom.
Indigenizing the Classroom. Engaging Native American/First Nations Literature and Culture in Non-native Settings. Ed. Publicacions de la Universitat de Valencia. , 2021
Investigación e Innovación en la Enseñanza Superior: Nuevos contextos, nuevas ideas. Ed. Octaedro, 2019
© De la edición: Rosabel Roig-Vila © Del texto: Las autoras y autores © De esta edición: Edicione... more © De la edición: Rosabel Roig-Vila © Del texto: Las autoras y autores © De esta edición: Ediciones OCTAEDRO, S.L.
In: _World Literature, Cosmopolitanism, Globality: Beyond, Against, Post, Otherwise_. Eds. Gesine Müller and Mariano Siskind. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter., 2019
Los mundos subalternos de la literatura mundial: hacia una comparación de las literaturas indígen... more Los mundos subalternos de la literatura mundial: hacia una comparación de las literaturas indígenas en Abya Yala/ las Américas La distancia entre el campo de la literatura mundial y las literaturas de los pueblos nativos de Abya Yala/las Américas es tan vasta como sorprendente. 1 A pesar de que los trabajos que abordan la indigeneidad desde una perspectiva comparatista y/o global están convirtiéndose en un área de interés crítico creciente (especialmente desde la aprobación de la Declaración de las Naciones Unidas sobre los derechos de los pueblos indígenas en 2007), estos trabajos suelen ser llevados a cabo desde campos como la antropología, la historia, la política, la geografía o los estudios medioambientales, pero rara vez desde la literatura mundial. Una consulta cruzada de los lemas temáticos indigenous literatures y world literature en la MLA International Bibliography arroja tan solo dos resultados, de los que únicamente es pertinente el estudio debido a Elvira Pulitano sobre la enseñanza de las literaturas indígenas de Australia, Nueva Zelanda y América del Norte. Su utilidad, sin embargo, se ve seriamente limitada cuando se constata que Pulitano no discute los asuntos seleccionados (calidad artística, traducción y transliteración, desafío epistemológico planteado a los lectores occidentales) en conexión explícita con el marco de la literatura mundial.
Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos Vol. 22 pp.37-57, 2018
In her novel Solar Storms (1995) Chickasaw novelist and poet Linda Hogan foresees what political ... more In her novel Solar Storms (1995) Chickasaw novelist and poet Linda Hogan foresees what political geographers today refer to as waterscapes, that is, water-based environments where a multiplicity of human and other-than-human forces interact with each other producing diverse forms of signification. This essay examines Indigenous experiences of water, geography, and social activism as they intersect in Hogan's waterscape narrative.
Studies in the Literary Imagination Vol. 50 n. 1 pp. 69-90, 2017
Dialogo. An Interdisciplinary Studies Journal, 2016
Gregori-Signes, C., & A. Brígido-Corachán. 2014. Appraising Digital Storytelling across Educational Contexts.
Digital Competence Development in Higher Education: An International Perspective. Peter Lang. Ed. M.L. Pérez Cañado & J. Ráez Padilla, 2014
Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses 27 (2014): 7-23, 2014
This article explores the socio-political background that led to widespread Native American urban... more This article explores the socio-political background that led to widespread Native American urban relocation in the period following World War II -a historical episode which is featured in Leslie Marmon Silko's acclaimed novel Ceremony (1977). Through an analysis of the recycling, reinterpreting practices carried out by one of Ceremony's memorable supporting characters, Navajo healer Betonie, Silko's political aim to interrogate the state of things and to re-value Native traditions in a context of ongoing relations of coloniality is made most clear. In Silko's novel, Betonie acts as an organic intellectual who is able to identify and challenge the 1950s neocolonial structure that forced Native American communities to either embrace hegemonic practices and lifestyles or else be condemned to cultural reification and abject poverty. Through his waste-collecting and recycling activities, Betonie develops alternative solutions that go beyond a merely spiritual or epistemological dimension of life and materially intervene in the social text. The margins of 1950s urban sprawl functioned as repositories of indigenous cultural and intellectual capital that was being consciously, actively transformed by Native agents such as him. Thus, through Ceremony's medicine man, Leslie Silko criticizes disempowering attitudes of victimhood and Native self-shame while vindicating indigenous historical territories and unconventional political strategies. She also anticipates the liminal practices of material and cultural recycling we see in 8
Experiencing Digital Storytelling. Ed. María Alcantud-Díaz and Carmen Gregori-Signes, 2013
La cultura en tiempos de desarrollo. Violencias, contradicciones y alternativas. Quaderns de Filologia. Anejo 78. Ed. N. Girona Fibla, 2012
Language Value 4/2: 56-69, 2012
This article focuses on two non-fiction works by Native American author N. Scott Momaday: his 196... more This article focuses on two non-fiction works by Native American author N. Scott Momaday: his 1969 historical memoir The Way to Rainy Mountain and his essay collection The Man Made of Words It specifically tackles performative conceptions of language in the Kiowa storytelling tradition, where words are experienced as speech acts that have the power to intervene in surrounding realities. Taking into account 20 th century ethno-cultural and linguistic policies in the United States, the article also reflects on the role indigenous languages may play in contemporary Native American Literature, which has most often been written in English.
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Articles and Book Chapters by Anna M. Brigido-Corachan
researching and writing her massive novel. To fill such an omission, this article takes account of Silko’s selective incorporation of Southern geographies and peoples. It engages the territories south of the U.S. border that are included in Silko’s Indigenous map of the Americas, and examines the novel’s representation of Guatemalan Mayas and Salvadoran refugees, who appear as anonymous, ghostly shadows in the Mexican chapters.
In his study Wisdom Sits in Places, Keith Basso describes Western Apache
storytellers as “place-makers,” creators of “place-worlds” through their imagining of alternative possibilities that are given “expressive shape.” Contemporary Native American writers have continued to build “place-worlds” in a relational manner that revises not just Indigenous localities past and present, but other realities, regions, nations, and communities of beings as well. These relational place-worlds are connective, speculative, and critical—and, through comparison, they amplify, reconsider, and reinforce alternative possibilities and expressive shapes.
In Xilase qui rié di’ sicasi rié nisa guiigu’ / La nostalgia no se marcha como el agua de los ríos and Where Clouds Are Formed, published only a year apart from each other, Indigenous movements on and with the land become decolonizing actions that challenge settler colonial borders and reinscribe other experiences of place in the Americas. Although their authors, Irma Pineda and Ofelia Zepeda, root their poetic works in very specific Native histories and tribal contexts (those of the Binnizá in southwest Mexico and the Tohono O’odham in the Arizona/Mexico border respectively), they are both driven by a relentless commitment to revitalize Indigenous languages and land-based traditions, drawing attention to social in/ justice in their regions. Their poems consider human suffering, racism, migration, environmental awareness, resurgence, and hope through figures in motion that are tied to specific memorial landscapes and communities. For them, the act of walking on the land and with the land becomes a decolonizing strategy to simultaneously vindicate Indigenous mobility rights and more-than-human presence in a borderless North America. In this chapter I examine Pineda’s and Zepeda’s place-based poetic praxis through a transborder, multilingual, and trans-Indigenous lens to amplify Native-based actions and contribute to decolonize Western-based academic disciplines such as American studies or world literature.
researching and writing her massive novel. To fill such an omission, this article takes account of Silko’s selective incorporation of Southern geographies and peoples. It engages the territories south of the U.S. border that are included in Silko’s Indigenous map of the Americas, and examines the novel’s representation of Guatemalan Mayas and Salvadoran refugees, who appear as anonymous, ghostly shadows in the Mexican chapters.
In his study Wisdom Sits in Places, Keith Basso describes Western Apache
storytellers as “place-makers,” creators of “place-worlds” through their imagining of alternative possibilities that are given “expressive shape.” Contemporary Native American writers have continued to build “place-worlds” in a relational manner that revises not just Indigenous localities past and present, but other realities, regions, nations, and communities of beings as well. These relational place-worlds are connective, speculative, and critical—and, through comparison, they amplify, reconsider, and reinforce alternative possibilities and expressive shapes.
In Xilase qui rié di’ sicasi rié nisa guiigu’ / La nostalgia no se marcha como el agua de los ríos and Where Clouds Are Formed, published only a year apart from each other, Indigenous movements on and with the land become decolonizing actions that challenge settler colonial borders and reinscribe other experiences of place in the Americas. Although their authors, Irma Pineda and Ofelia Zepeda, root their poetic works in very specific Native histories and tribal contexts (those of the Binnizá in southwest Mexico and the Tohono O’odham in the Arizona/Mexico border respectively), they are both driven by a relentless commitment to revitalize Indigenous languages and land-based traditions, drawing attention to social in/ justice in their regions. Their poems consider human suffering, racism, migration, environmental awareness, resurgence, and hope through figures in motion that are tied to specific memorial landscapes and communities. For them, the act of walking on the land and with the land becomes a decolonizing strategy to simultaneously vindicate Indigenous mobility rights and more-than-human presence in a borderless North America. In this chapter I examine Pineda’s and Zepeda’s place-based poetic praxis through a transborder, multilingual, and trans-Indigenous lens to amplify Native-based actions and contribute to decolonize Western-based academic disciplines such as American studies or world literature.
This volume brings together a selection of articles that explore digital storytelling in various fields and levels of education . While presenting creative experiences and offering practical tips, the articles also share a common methodological way : gather and evaluate objective data to show how the practices of digital stories are an important asset for the twenty-first century classrooms . This volume brings together a selection of articles explores That the digital storytelling in various educational fields and levels . While presenting creative experiences and practices, the articles also share a common methodological drive: They appraise and collect objective data to show how digital storytelling practices are a strong asset to the 21st century classroom .