Searching for Yellowstone: Race, Gender, Family and Memory in the Postmodern West

Yellowstone. Sacagawea. Lewis & Clark. Transcontinental railroad. Indians as college mascots. All are iconic figures, symbols of the West in the Anglo-American imagination. Well-known cultural critic Norman Denzin interrogates each of these icons for their cultural meaning in this finely woven work. Part autoethnography, part historical narrative, part art criticism, part cultural theory, Denzin creates a postmodern bricolage of images, staged dramas, quotations, reminiscences and stories that strike to the essence of the American dream and the shattered dreams of the peoples it subjugated.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments, 1. SEARCHING FOR YELLOWSTONE I, 2. INDIANS AND COWBOYS, 3. INDIANS IN THE PARK, 4. REMEMBERING TO FORGET, 5. SACAGAWEA’S NICKNAME, OR THE SACAGAWEA PROBLEM, 6. DRAWN TO YELLOWSTONE I, 7. DRAWN TO YELLOWSTONE II, 8. RETIRE THE CHIEF, KEEP THE INDIANS, 9. SEARCHING FOR YELLOWSTONE II, AND ALICIA’S HORSES, 10. CODA, Notes, References, Index, About the Author

About the Author :
Norman K. Denzin is Distinguished Professor of Communications, College of Communications Scholar, and Research Professor of Communications, Sociology, and Humanities at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. One of the world's foremost authorities on qualitative research and cultural criticism, Denzin is the author or editor of more than two dozen books, including Reading Race; Interpretive Ethnography; The Cinematic Society; The Voyeur's Gaze; and The Alcoholic Self. He is past editor of The Sociological Quarterly, co-editor (with Yvonna S. Lincoln) of three editions of the landmark Handbook of Qualitative Research, coeditor (with Michael D. Giardina) of two plenary volumes from prior Congresses of Qualitative Inquiry, co-editor (with Lincoln) of the methods journal Qualitative Inquiry, founding editor of Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies, and editor of three book series.

Review :
"I read this book in one thoroughly engrossed sitting and immediately began planning a family trip to Yellowstone...It is a tribute to Denzin's fine performative text that he captures in his memories, his performance scripts, his recovered historical records and art, and in his analyses of the visual and visceral representations of the West the curious admixture of what I elsewhere call "the plural present." For there is in the discourses creating the new Old West a revisioning of the past made more inclusive by these counter-narratives, more democratic in their depictions of "what happened," and more accountable for it." - H.L. "Bud" Goodall, Arizona State University Denzin has produced an unusual work on the production and performance of Native American archetypes, specifically as they intersect with the history of Yellowstone National Park and with Denzin's own personal history. Denzin's idea of a "critical performative pedagogy" is a product of his background as an ethnologist, cultural critic, and leading authority on qualitative research. Students and scholars in areas such as cultural theory, American Studies, and ethnic studies, as well as readers interested in cultural memoir, will appreciate his interdisciplinary approach. Perhaps most valuable for classroom instruction will be the chapters that present concepts in the form of short plays, which will permit students to interact with the text and "own" the material through performance. Summing Up: Recommended. --H. Corbett, Northeastern University, CHOICE