Material Matters: Book and Bodies in Indigenous Literary History, 1772-1936

FAIN: FT-278860-21

Amy Gore
North Dakota State University (Fargo, ND 58102-1843)

Complete a five-chapter manuscript on Indigenous book history, spanning 1772-1936.  

Material Matters focuses on Indigenous authors during the long nineteenth century, from 1772 to 1936, to examine the known firsts of Indigenous literature through their book history. Starting with Samson Occom’s A Sermon Preached at the Execution of Moses Paul (1772) as the first book published in English by a Native author, and moving to other first entries into Indigenous literary production, I argue that the publication history of Indigenous books matter: they embody a frontline of colonization in which Indigenous authors battle the public perception and reception of Indigenous books and negotiate the representations of Indigenous bodies. Few Indigenous have ever been studied extensively in terms of their book history, and through textual and bibliographical analysis along with substantial archival research, I attend to this significant scholarly gap by demonstrating the cultural connection between book history and the histories of displacement and resistance of Indigenous peoples.