Lindsey Claire Smith

author of Indians, Environment and Identity on the Borders of American Literature

November 4, 2015

Lindsey Claire Smith is Assistant Professor of English at Oklahoma State University. She teaches classes on Native American literature, African American literature, and literature and the environment. Her current project, "The City in American Indian Literatures," uncovers the role of colonization in theoretical approaches to urban space and highlights myriad ways in which urban Indian writers locate and assert sovereign indigenous identities in unexpected ways.

Indians, Environment, and Identity on the Borders of American Literature foregrounds amalgamation among American Indians, African Americans, and Euramericans as a central feature of American literature. The authors discussed, including James Fenimore Cooper, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Leslie Marmon Silko, place this cross-cultural contact in nature, not only collapsing cultural and racial boundaries, but also complicating divisions between 'wilderness' and 'civilization.'

Responding to contemporary theoretical approaches to race, culture, and nationhood, this book points toward the multiple perspectives and cultures that distinguish American literature. Smith highlights the role of geography in these critical discourses, forging a connection between ecological theory and ethnic studies.

URL: https://library.okstate.edu/news/celebratingbooks/2009-honorees/lindsey-claire-smith

Last Updated: 14 January 2022