Out of joint: Neoliberalism, narrative, and the gothic quest for place in the dialectical west

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Publication Type dissertation
School or College College of Humanities
Department English
Author Wickelson, Paul B.
Title Out of joint: Neoliberalism, narrative, and the gothic quest for place in the dialectical west
Date 2014-05
Description In this dissertation, I argue that although the Gothic sensibility in the U.S. cultural tradition is often associated with the regional spaces of the South and the Northeast, we should also be willing to imagine the U.S. West in Gothic terms. Stories of ghosts, haunting, and trauma help us to come to terms not only with the historical legacy of the Western frontier, but can also help us grapple with the West in today's period of global capital flows, inequality, frayed social ties, and the deterioration of meaningful metanarratives. Toward this end of reconsidering the West as a haunted space of trauma (past and present), I examine cultural texts that help illuminate the fraught, "out of joint" qualities of the post-1989 West: Sandra Cisneros's Caramelo, Sherman Alexie's Flight, Walter Kirn's Up in the Air, Richard Rodriguez's Brown, Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, and Charles Bowden's Murder City.
Type Text
Publisher University of Utah
Subject Contemporar; Culture; Globalization; Gothic; Neoliberalism; West
Dissertation Institution University of Utah
Dissertation Name Doctor of Philosophy
Language eng
Rights Management Copyright © Paul B. Wickelson 2014
Format Medium application/pdf
Format Extent 1,455,402 Bytes
Identifier etd3/id/2936
ARK ark:/87278/s66q55dz
Setname ir_etd
ID 196505
Reference URL https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s66q55dz