Blake Allmendinger's Books

Geographic Personas

Self-Transformation and Performance in the American West

By: Blake Allmendinger

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Geographic Personas

Self-Transformation and Performance in the American West

By: Blake Allmendinger

During the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as the American West underwent a series of transformations, certain pivotal figures also undertook a process of self-transformation. Geographic Personas reveals a practice of public performance, impersonation, deception, and fraud, exposing the secret lives of men and women who capitalized on changes occurring in the region. These changes affected the arts; land ownership; scientific exploration; definitions of race, gender, and sexual orientation; and relations between the United States and other countries throughout the world. In addition to well-known figures such as Clarence King and Willa Cather, Geographic Personas examines lesser-known players in the performative process of westward expansion, including Isadora Duncan, the founder of modern American dance; Polish actress Helena Modjeska; Adolf Hitler's favorite author, Karl May; Japanese poet Yone Noguchi; Sylvester Long, a mixed-race star of Native American silent films whose mother was born into slavery; and the perpetrator of the greatest land grant hoax in U.S. history. While scholars have written about the environmental, demographic, and economic changes that occurred in the West during the nineteenth century, Allmendinger adds a crucial piece to this dialogue. He brings to light the experiences of artists, dancers, film stars, con men, and criminals in stories of self-transformation that are often sad, tragic, and poignant.

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Page Count

262

Publisher

U of Nebraska Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1496226909

ISBN 13

9781496226907

The Cowboy

Representations of Labor in an American Work Culture

By: Blake Allmendinger

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The Cowboy

Representations of Labor in an American Work Culture

By: Blake Allmendinger

What are the connections between cattle branding and Christian salvation, between livestock castration and square dancing, between rustling and the making of spurs and horsehair bridles in prison, between children's coloring books and cowboy poetry as it is practiced today? The Cowboy usesliterary, historical, folkloric, and pop cultural sources to document ways in which cowboys address religion, gender, economics, and literature. Arguing that cowboys are defined by the work they do, Allmendinger sets out in each chapter to investigate one form of labor (such as branding, castration,or rustling) that cowboys perform in their "work culture." He then looks at early oral poems that cowboys recited around campfires, on trail drives, at roundups, and at home in their bunkhouses, and at later poems, histories and autobiographies written by cowboys--most of which have never beforebeen studied by scholars. He discovers that these texts not only deal with work but with larger concerns, including art, morality, spirituality, and male sexuality. In addition to spotlighting little-known texts, art, and archival sources, The Cowboy examines the works of Twain, Steinbeck, Cather,Norris, Dana, McMurtry, and others, and features more than 60 historic photographs, many of which have not been published until now.

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Page Count

218

Publisher

Oxford University Press, USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

019507243X

ISBN 13

9780195072433

Imagining the African American West

By: Blake Allmendinger

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Imagining the African American West

By: Blake Allmendinger

The literature of the African American West is the last racial discourse of the region that remains unexplored. Blake Allmendinger addresses this void in literary and cultural studies with Imagining the African American West?the first comprehensive study of African American literature on the early frontier and in the modern urban American West. ø Allmendinger charts the terrain of African American literature in the West through his exploration of novels, histories, autobiographies, science fiction, mysteries, formula westerns, melodramas, experimental theater, and political essays, as well as rap music and film. He examines the histories of James P. Beckwourth and Oscar Micheaux; slavery, the Civil War, and the significance of the American frontier to blacks; and the Harlem Renaissance, the literature of urban unrest, rap music, black noir, and African American writers, including Toni Morrison and Walter Mosley. His study utilizes not only the works of well-known African American writers but also some obscure and neglected works, out-of-print books, and unpublished manuscripts in library archives. ø Much of the scholarly neglect of the ?Black West? can be blamed on how the American West has been imagined, constructed, and framed in scholarship to date. In his study, Allmendinger provides the appropriate theoretical, cultural, and historical contexts for understanding the literature and suggests new directions for the future of black western literature.

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Page Count

183

Publisher

U of Nebraska Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0803210671

ISBN 13

9780803210677

The Melon Capital of the World

A Memoir

By: Blake Allmendinger

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The Melon Capital of the World

A Memoir

By: Blake Allmendinger

In this psychologically gripping memoir, Blake Allmendinger returns to his childhood home after a forty-year absence. His homecoming to the struggling farming community of Rocky Ford, Colorado, formerly known as the Melon Capital of the World, forces the author to confront his own sad and disturbing history, one that parallels his hometown’s decline. Allmendinger’s family was dominated by his emotionally and mentally unstable mother, who became depressed while living in Rocky Ford as a young woman. For the rest of her life she abused the members of her family, creating tensions that remained unresolved until the end of the author’s visit, when his mother died suddenly, a family member committed suicide, and a secret diary was discovered. The Melon Capital of the World is a remarkable blend of personal narrative, memoir, and Allmendinger’s interviews with people who knew his mother and her family. His story is a gritty but compassionate, and at times humorous, portrait of a family trying to survive in the rapidly disappearing rural American West.

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Page Count

152

Publisher

U of Nebraska Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0803255403

ISBN 13

9780803255401

Geographic Personas

Self-Transformation and Performance in the American West

By: Blake Allmendinger

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Geographic Personas

Self-Transformation and Performance in the American West

By: Blake Allmendinger

Geographic Personas explores how writers, dancers, actors, imposters, and con artists were influenced by three transformative factors—population growth, technology, and literary realism—that contributed to their personal reinvention during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the American West.

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Page Count

226

Publisher

U of Nebraska Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1496225066

ISBN 13

9781496225061

Imagining the African American West

By: Blake Allmendinger

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Imagining the African American West

By: Blake Allmendinger

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Page Count

183

Publisher

U of Nebraska Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0803210671

ISBN 13

9780803210677

The Melon Capital of the World

A Memoir

By: Blake Allmendinger

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The Melon Capital of the World

A Memoir

By: Blake Allmendinger

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Page Count

118

Publisher

U of Nebraska Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0803256655

ISBN 13

9780803256651

Ten Most Wanted

The New Western Literature

By: Blake Allmendinger

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Ten Most Wanted

The New Western Literature

By: Blake Allmendinger

This volume traces the modern critical and performance history of this play, one of Shakespeare's most-loved and most-performed comedies. The essay focus on such modern concerns as feminism, deconstruction, textual theory, and queer theory.

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Page Count

222

Publisher

Psychology Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0415914620

ISBN 13

9780415914628

The Cowboy

Representations of Labor in an American Work Culture

By: Blake Allmendinger

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The Cowboy

Representations of Labor in an American Work Culture

By: Blake Allmendinger

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Page Count

218

Publisher

Oxford University Press, USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

019507243X

ISBN 13

9780195072433

Book's by Blake Allmendinger

Geographic Personas

Geographic Personas

The Cowboy

The Cowboy

Imagining the African American West

Imagining the African American West

The Melon Capital of the World

The Melon Capital of the World

Geographic Personas

Geographic Personas

Imagining the African American West

Imagining the African American West

The Melon Capital of the World

The Melon Capital of the World

Ten Most Wanted

Ten Most Wanted

The Cowboy

The Cowboy

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