| 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. |
