“Our Wonderful Adventures in the Southwest”

2020 ◽  
pp. 113-169
Author(s):  
Melissa J. Homestead
Keyword(s):  
Willa Cather ◽  
American Southwest ◽  
Creative Work ◽  
Modern City ◽  
City Life ◽  
Full Treatment ◽  
Professor's House

Willa Cather and Edith Lewis traveled together to the American Southwest in 1915, 1916, 1925, and 1926, and southwestern travel became their shared passion, an escape from the pressures of modern city life into a realm of adventure. In the Southwest, Cather also sought experiences and information necessary for her creative work, and she transformed experiences she shared with Lewis into fiction. They informed Cather’s novels The Professor’s House and Death Comes for the Archbishop. This chapter describes their experiences as tourists and as women playing at being western cowboys. The chapter also gives full treatment to Lewis’s role as Cather’s editorial collaborator, using The Professor’s House as an example.

Sex and Evolution in Willa Cather'sO Pioneers!andThe Song of the Lark

Prospects ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 565-591
Author(s):  
Bert Bender
Keyword(s):  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Willa Cather ◽  
Thorstein Veblen ◽  
Professor's House ◽  
Song Of The Lark

Studies of Willa Cather refer to Charles Darwin so rarely that one might conclude she hardly knew of him. But at least one recent interpreter has begun to discuss the Darwinian shadow in her work, describing the “Darwinist cartography” in her novelThe Professor's House(1925) and noting the “striking parallels between Cather's mapping of America and that undertaken by her near contemporary, Thorstein Veblen.”

Epic Stone Butch

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-98
Author(s):  
K. Allison Hammer
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Willa Cather ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
American Frontier ◽  
American Writer ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Professor's House ◽  
First World

Abstract Through application of the contemporary term transmasculinity and the more historical stone butch, the author questions the critical tendency to perceive American writer Willa Cather only as lesbian while ignoring or undertheorizing a transgender longing at play in her fiction, short stories, and letters. While biographical evidence must not be approached as simply coterminous with literary production, as literature often exceeds or resists such alignments, Cather's letters in particular suggest a strong identification with her male fictional alliances. Analysis of her letters alongside two of her most treasured, and disparaged, novels, One of Ours (1922) and The Professor's House (1925), conveys Cather's wish for an idealized masculinity, both for herself and for Western culture, that would survive two coeval historical processes and events: the closing of the American frontier and the First World War. Through what the author calls a stone butch “armature,” she and her characters retained masculine dignity despite historical foreclosure of Cather's manly ideal, Winston Churchill's Great Man, who was for her the artistic and intellectual casualty of the period. Cather expressed the peculiar nostalgic longing present in stone butch, and in the explosion of new forms of transmasculinity in the present. This suggests that historical transgender styles don't disappear entirely, even as new categories emerge.

Southwest Modernism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel de Baca
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Native American ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
American Southwest ◽  
Spanish Colonial ◽  
Modern City ◽  
Colonial Culture ◽  
American Subject ◽  
Modern Artists

Southwest Modernism refers to modern artists who were drawn to the style and subject matter of indigenous and Spanish colonial culture in the American Southwest, especially during the first half of the twentieth century. For some, the appropriation of uniquely American subject matter helped distinguish their practice from European Modernism at a time of great transatlantic collaboration. The rugged landscape, distinctive architecture and colorful Native American and Hispanic religious artifacts appealed to those who had grown weary of modern city dwelling. Such an appropriation of rural, native and non-Western visual and material culture has always been vital for the development of Modernism.

Barnet, Boris (1902–1965)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vito Adriaensens
Keyword(s):  
Great War ◽  
German Expressionism ◽  
Modern City ◽  
City Life ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Dziga Vertov ◽  
Visual Characteristics ◽  
American Style ◽  
The Relationship

Boris Barnet (b. June 18, 1902, Moscow, Russia; d. January 8, 1965, Riga, Latvia) was a Russian actor, director, and professional boxer. He made his debut as an actor in Lev Kuleshov’s comedy Neobychainye priklyucheniya mistera Vesta v strane bolshevikov (The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr West in the Land of the Bolsheviks) (1924) along with Vsevolod Pudovkin, after they both famously attended Kuleshov’s three-year workshop on film principles that spawned the film. Barnet inherited Kuleshov’s montage principles, consisting of the combination of American-style fast cutting, combined with avant-garde techniques from French Impressionism and German Expressionism, thus setting it apart from its "dull" predecessors. For Kuleshov, the film came together in the editing room, where he insisted on the importance of the relationship between shots and scenes. Barnet debuted with the contemporary spy serial Miss Mend (1926), and became well known for his swiftly paced comedies; he was therefore somewhat of an anomaly in the propaganda-driven Soviet montage cinema. In his two most celebrated comedies, Devushka s korobkoi (The Girl with the Hatbox) (1927) and Dom na Trubnoi (The House on Trubnaya Square) (1928), Barnet took on the speed of modern city life and translated it into an elating style by combining the visual characteristics of Dziga Vertov with the rhythm and acting of someone like Buster Keaton. In the sound era, Barnet continued to impress internationally with lyrical masterpieces such as the understated Great War ensemble piece Okraina (Outskirts) (1933) and the impressionistic fisherman’s drama U samogo sinego morya (By the Bluest of Seas) (1936).

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