Matching Items (2)
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- All Subjects: Folklore
- Creators: Adamson, Joni
- Creators: Cottam, Erica, 1985-
Description
This project examines the intersections between sexual/cultural cross-dressing and un/documented immigration from the point of view of folklore and immigration studies using Sui Sin Far's short story collection Mrs. Spring Fragrance and Karen Tei Yamashita's novel Tropic of Orange. Using the lenses of folklore theory and cross-dressing highlights aspects of immigration (and its intersection with gender and race) that are otherwise missed; it is necessary to examine the evolving ways in which fictionalized cross-dressers re-craft and occupy the spaces from which they are barred in order to address and redress questions of immigration today. Incorporating anthropology, history, folkloristics, and gender studies, this project shows that historical forms of cross-dressing and immigration lead to the development of unstable identities and pressures to "re-dress" and return to one's original space. More recent studies about gender, however, reveal a historical change in how cross-dressers negotiate their identities and the space(s) they inhabit. Therefore, it is crucial to inspect cross-dressing and immigration as both historical and contemporary phenomena. While Mrs. Spring Fragrance (published in 1912) represents more conventional ideas of cross-dressing and immigration, Tropic of Orange (published in 1997) offers alternative ways to navigate borders, immigration, and identity by using these concepts more playfully and self-consciously. Although sexual/cultural cross-dressing and un/documented immigration are not the same in every case, there are enough similarities between the two to warrant investigating whether some of the solutions reached by modern cross-dressers and gender-ambiguous people might not also help un/documented immigrants to re-negotiate their status, identities, and spaces in the midst of an unstable and at times hostile environment. In fact, an examination of such intersections can address and redress immigration by changing the perceptions of how, and the contexts in which, people view immigration and borders. Thus, this project contends that it is the combination of folkloristics, gender and immigration studies, Mrs. Spring Fragrance, and Tropic of Orange together that precipitates such a reading.
ContributorsZheng, Ding Ding (Author) / Sadowski-Smith, Claudia (Thesis advisor) / Adamson, Joni (Thesis advisor) / Horan, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This dissertation is a cultural history of the frontier stories surrounding an Arizona politician and Indian trader, John Lorenzo Hubbell. From 1878 to 1930, Hubbell operated a trading post in Ganado, Arizona--what is today Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site. During that time, he played host to hundreds of visitors who trekked into Navajo country in search of scientific knowledge and artistic inspiration as the nation struggled to come to terms with industrialization, immigration, and other modern upheavals. Hubbell became an important mediator between the Native Americans and the Anglos who came to study them, a facilitator of the creation of the Southwestern myth. He lavished hospitality upon some of the Southwest's principle myth-makers, regaling them with stories of his younger days in the Southwest, which his guests remembered and shared face-to-face and in print, from novels to booster literature. By applying place theory to Hubbell's stories, and by placing them in the context of the history of tourism in the Southwest, I explore the relationship between those stories, the visitors who heard and retold them, and the process of place- and myth-making in the Southwest. I argue that the stories operated on two levels. First, they became a kind of folklore for Hubbell's visitors, a cycle of stories that expressed their ties to and understanding of the Navajo landscape and bound them together as a group, despite the fact that they must inevitably leave Navajo country. Second, the stories fit into the broader myth- and image-making processes that transformed the Southwest into a distinctive region in the imaginations of Americans. Based on a close reading of the stories and supporting archival research, I analyze four facets of the Hubbell legend: the courteous Spanish host; the savior of Native American arts and crafts; the fearless conqueror and selfless benefactor of the Navajos; and the thoroughly Western lawman. Each incarnation of the Hubbell legend spoke to travelers' relationships with Navajo country and the Southwest in different ways. I argue, however, that after Hubbell's death, the connection between his stories and travelers' sense of place weakened dramatically.
ContributorsCottam, Erica, 1985- (Author) / Pyne, Stephen (Thesis advisor) / Szuter, Christine (Committee member) / Osburn, Katherine (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014