A Planetary Lens
The Photo-Poetics of Western Women's Writing
1st Edition
Published on 1. October 2021
354 pages
978-1-4962-2838-3 (ISBN)
Description
Thomas J. Lyon Book Award from the Western Literature Association
A Planetary Lens delves into the history of the photo-book, the materiality of the photographic image on the page, and the cultural significance of landscape to reassess the value of print, to locate the sites where stories resonate, and to listen to western women's voices. From foundational California photographers Anne Brigman and Alma Lavenson to contemporary Native poets and writers Leslie Marmon Silko and Joy Harjo, women artists have used photographs to generate stories and to map routes across time and place. A Planetary Lens illuminates the richness and theoretical sophistication of such composite texts.
Looking beyond the ideologies of wilderness, migration, and progress that have shaped settler and popular conceptions of the region, A Planetary Lens shows how many artists gather and assemble images and texts to reimagine landscape, identity, and history in the U.S. West. Based on extensive research into the production, publication, and circulation of women's photo-texts, A Planetary Lens offers a fresh perspective on the entangled and gendered histories of western American photography and literature and new models for envisioning regional relations.
A Planetary Lens delves into the history of the photo-book, the materiality of the photographic image on the page, and the cultural significance of landscape to reassess the value of print, to locate the sites where stories resonate, and to listen to western women's voices. From foundational California photographers Anne Brigman and Alma Lavenson to contemporary Native poets and writers Leslie Marmon Silko and Joy Harjo, women artists have used photographs to generate stories and to map routes across time and place. A Planetary Lens illuminates the richness and theoretical sophistication of such composite texts.
Looking beyond the ideologies of wilderness, migration, and progress that have shaped settler and popular conceptions of the region, A Planetary Lens shows how many artists gather and assemble images and texts to reimagine landscape, identity, and history in the U.S. West. Based on extensive research into the production, publication, and circulation of women's photo-texts, A Planetary Lens offers a fresh perspective on the entangled and gendered histories of western American photography and literature and new models for envisioning regional relations.
Reviews / Votes
"A fine addition to the University of Nebraska Press 'Postwestern Horizons' series, this book will be valuable for students of US literature and photography and of feminist and gender studies."-B. Wallenstein, Choice "Goodman's study provides a well-researched and accessible model for producing interdisciplinary scholarly writing for the humanities, environmental studies, and antiracist projects. . . . A Planetary Lens is an invitation for future scholars to further engage the important relations between regionality and planetary citizenship, meditative text and snapshot, adaptation and revision, as well as change and belonging."-Susan Kollin, American Literary History "A Planetary Lens demonstrates a new reading strategy that will serve us well as we consider the deep and ongoing effects of patriarchy and colonization on the way women and others produce creative texts and understand place. . . . Goodman's beautiful book reveals how re-storying colonized spaces is crucial for bodies and land."-Gioia Woods, editor of Left in the West: Literature, Culture, and Progressive Politics in the American West "A Planetary Lens advances several important scholarly conversations including environmental justice, feminist critical regionalism, local and global Indigenous studies, western American literary studies, and material ecocriticism. Goodman's elegantly written study draws together texts from a broad array of perspectives to interrogate how artists combine image and written texts in ways that revise and reorient conceptions of region, self, and storytelling. . . . Lucid and persuasive."-Amy T. Hamilton, author of Peregrinations: Walking in American LiteratureMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Lincoln
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
34 photographs, index
File size
3,59 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-4962-2838-3 (9781496228383)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
10/2021
University of Nebraska Press
€84.38
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
Audrey Goodman is a professor of English at Georgia State University. She is the author of Lost Homelands: Ruin and Reconstruction in the Twentieth-Century Southwest and Translating Southwestern Landscapes: The Making of an Anglo Literary Region.
