Louise Erdrich

Deborah L. Madsen is Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She has published more than a dozen books on various aspects of literary theory, American studies, feminism, and ethnic literature.

Deborah Madsen is one of the leading scholars of Native American literature in Europe. She has assembled a talented group of scholars to analyze three important novels by Louise Erdrich (the early Tracks and the recent Last Report and Plague of Doves). Erdrich is one of the best-known Native writers working today, and these essays, employing methodologies ranging from gender and LGBT studies to critical race theory represent an important contribution to scholarship about her. It deserves a place on the shelf of any serious scholar of contemporary Native literature.

• 1. Louise Erdrich in Context Deborah L. Madsen; PART I: Tracks; Short introduction Deborah L. Madsen; 2. A Bowen Family Systems Reading of Tracks Allan Chavkin & Nancy Feyl Chavkin; 3. "I knew there never was another martyr like me": Pauline Puyat, Historical Trauma, and Tracks Connie A. Jacobs; 4. "To become a bureaucrat myself": History and Law in Tracks David Stirrup; PART II: The Last Report on the Miracles At Little No Horse; Short introduction Deborah L. Madsen; 5. Power and Authority in the Realms of Racial and Gender Politics: Postcolonial and Critical Race Theory in The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse Mark Shackleton; 6. "We Speak of Everything": Indigenous Traditions in The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse P. Jane Hafen; 7. Love and the Slippery Slope of Sexual Orientation: L/G/B/T/Qetc Sensibility in The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse Patrice Hollrah PART III: The Plague of Doves; Short introduction Deborah L. Madsen; 8. "It All Does Come to Nothing in the End": Nationalism and Gender in Louise Erdrich's The Plague of Doves Gina Valentino; 9. So, a Priest Walks into a Reservation Tragicomedy: Humor in The Plague of Doves John Gamber; 10. Haunted by Birds: An Eco-critical View of Personhood in Louise Erdrich's The Plague of Doves Catherine Rainwater; Works cited; Further Reading; Notes on Contributors; Index.