the john muir exhibit - uop - uop_conference_1996 - asle panel
Panel Presentation
Chair: Michael Branch, University of Nevada, Reno
Presenters:
Mark Schlenz, University of California, Santa Barbara
Daniel Duane, University of California, Santa Cruz
Barbara "Barney" Nelson, Sul Ross State University
Michael Branch, University of Nevada, Reno
Paper #1
Savagism in the Sierra: Native Americans in My First Summer in the Sierra and
Mary Austin's The Land of Little Rain
Mark Schlenz
University of California, Santa Barbara
"Nothing truly wild is unclean": John Muir's oft-quoted articulation of a
wilderness aesthetic attempts sanctification of the natural through a
problematically ethnocentric contrast with the "uncleanliness" of the Paiutes he
meets and describes in Bloody Canyon and on the shores of Mono Lake. This paper
examines the negative stereotyping of Muir's representations of Native Americans
and their culture in My First Summer in the Sierra through contrast with the
sympathetic portrayals of Indian characters in the work of his less-recognized
contemporary, Mary Austin. In The Land of Little Rain Austin develops a
wilderness aesthetic and an ethics of human-nature interaction derived from her
studied observation and deep appreciation of native cultures. This paper
develops a study of contrasting representations of Native Americans in the
nature writing of Muir and Austin as a critical context to consider social,
political, cultural, and multicultural implications of their respective
environmental aesthetics and ethics.
Mark Schlenz teaches American literature and environmental studies at the
University of California, Santa Barbara, where he completed his Ph.D. in English
in 1994. A member of the Executive Council of the Association for the Study of
Literature and Environment, he is the author of a number of books about Muir's
home territory, including Exploring the Eastern Sierra: California and Nevada
(Companion Press, 1990) and Mono Lake: Mirror of Imagination (Companion Press,
forthcoming 1996).
Paper #2
"I Found Myself Fairly Adrift":
A Reflection on John Muir's Vision of Water and Wind"
Daniel Duane
University of California, Santa Cruz
"I Found Myself Fairly Adrift" is a creative reflection on wind and water and on
John Muir's remarkable sensitivity to both. The author, in the waters off
Northern California, watches pigeon guillemots diving for fish and thinks of
Muir's celebrated water ouzel, sees surf rolling toward evergreen forested
hillsides and remembers Muir's remarkable wave metaphors in "The Description of
a Wind Storm." Combining personal reflections on the natural world with a
scholarly appreciation for Muir's descriptions of wind and water, this paper
braids examination of natural patterns with consideration of the texts in which
Muir celebrates such patterns.
Daniel Duane is a Ph.D. candidate in American literature at the University of
California, Santa Cruz, where he teaches nature writing and American literature.
An experienced creative writer and mountaineer whose climbing expeditions often
take him to Yosemite, Dan is the author of Lighting Out: A Vision of California
and the Mountains (Gray Wolf Press, 1994) and Caught Inside: A Surfer's Year on
the California Coast (North Point Press, forthcoming 1996).
Paper #3
Hoofed Locusts:
John Muir and Mary Austin's Opposing Views of Sheep
Barbara "Barney" Nelson
Sul Ross State University
This paper is an ecocritical comparison of representations of sheep and
shepherding in the work of John Muir and Mary Austin. Using Muir's unpublished
"Twenty Hill Hollow" journal, his correspondence, and My First Summer in the
Sierra, the author compares Muir's early descriptions of sheep behavior, written
while he was a shepherd in Yosemite, with comparable accounts written many years
later. The author argues that the disparaging descriptions of sheep in My First
Summer in the Sierra were prompted by Austin's The Flock (1906), which presents
sheep and shepherding as beneficial and romantic. In his own writing, Muir
counters Austin's views point for point. During the time both books were
published, Yosemite was embroiled in a bitter struggle between those who wanted
to preserve the area as a "pleasure ground" and those who wanted to preserve the
area as home and range.
Barbara "Barney" Nelson is a scholar, creative writer, and rancher who teaches
environmental literature and the literature of the American west at Sul Ross
State University in Alpine, Texas. She is the author of a number of books on the
west, including The Last Campfire (Texas A&M University Press, 1984) and Voices
and Visions of the American West (Texas Monthly Press, 1986).
Paper #4
Self, Salvation, and Story:
Writing Rescues on Glenora Peak and the Taylor Glacier
Michael Branch
University of Nevada, Reno
This paper examines John Muir's construction and presentation of self in two
narratives of perilous climbing adventures in Alaska. The author compares Alaska
missionary Hall Young's romantic image of Muir as a heroic mountaineer with the
self-effacing persona of Muir's own books and with the decentered or
"transparent" style of Muir's mountaineering narratives. Muir's willingness to
celebrate his own prowess as a mountaineer was always predicated upon making
nature--in the form of a wild sheep, a flower, a glacier, or a dog--the "hero"
of his story. Although Muir became the romantic hero of Hall Young's Alaska
stories, his own work projects the romantic sensibility onto the landscape,
thereby decentering the human subject.
Michael Branch is Assistant Professor of Literature and Environment at the
University of Nevada, Reno, where he teaches 18th and 19th century American
nature writing and environmental literature. He is president of the Association
for the Study of Literature and Environment, co-editor of The Height of Our
Mountains: Nature Writing from Virginia's Blue Ridge and Shenandoah Valley
(Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming 1996), and author of several
articles and conference papers on John Muir.
1996 John Muir Conference
Home
| Alphabetical Index
| What's New & About this Site