Blake Allmendinger is a professor of English at the University of California–Los Angeles. He is the author of several books, including Imagining the African American West (Nebraska, 2005) and The Melon Capital of the World (Nebraska, 2015).

"Blake Allmendinger's Geographic Personas offers a well-researched and engaging analysis of reinvention and self-transformation in the American West."-Susan Kollin, Western Historical Quarterly "Allmendinger interweaves a bevy of first-hand, contemporaneous accounts with more-recent literary examinations."-K. Edgerton, Choice "An engaging and insightful story."-Richard Stott, Journal of Arizona History “Allmendinger’s chapters combine literary and cultural criticism with brief, pungent biographies. The endnotes alone provide a rich tour of some strange and illuminating byways. The learning is carried very lightly and provides another welcome installment in the Allmendinger project.”-David Wyatt, author of When America Turned: Reckoning with 1968

• Introduction: The Map and the Territory1. Geographic Personas: The Passing of Clarence King2. Lord of the Limber Tongue: The Great Spanish Land Grant Fraud and the Barony of Arizona3. A French Canadian Cowboy: Branding Will James4. Making an Indian: The Case of Sylvester Long5. L’Ouest BohÈme: Willa Cather’s Transnational Prairie6. A Homeless Snail: Yone Noguchi and Japanese Self-Invention7. The Past Is the Biggest Country of All: Remembering Helena Modjeska8. Deutschland Über Alles: Germany’s Literary Colonization of the U.S. Frontier9. The Problem of Representation: Isadora Duncan Sleeps With the Russian NavyAfterword: Burials and ExhumationsNotesBibliographyIndex

Blake Allmendinger is a professor of English at the University of California–Los Angeles. He is the author of several books, including Imagining the African American West (Nebraska, 2005) and The Melon Capital of the World (Nebraska, 2015).

"Blake Allmendinger's Geographic Personas offers a well-researched and engaging analysis of reinvention and self-transformation in the American West."-Susan Kollin, Western Historical Quarterly "Allmendinger interweaves a bevy of first-hand, contemporaneous accounts with more-recent literary examinations."-K. Edgerton, Choice "An engaging and insightful story."-Richard Stott, Journal of Arizona History “Allmendinger’s chapters combine literary and cultural criticism with brief, pungent biographies. The endnotes alone provide a rich tour of some strange and illuminating byways. The learning is carried very lightly and provides another welcome installment in the Allmendinger project.”-David Wyatt, author of When America Turned: Reckoning with 1968

• Introduction: The Map and the Territory1. Geographic Personas: The Passing of Clarence King2. Lord of the Limber Tongue: The Great Spanish Land Grant Fraud and the Barony of Arizona3. A French Canadian Cowboy: Branding Will James4. Making an Indian: The Case of Sylvester Long5. L’Ouest BohÈme: Willa Cather’s Transnational Prairie6. A Homeless Snail: Yone Noguchi and Japanese Self-Invention7. The Past Is the Biggest Country of All: Remembering Helena Modjeska8. Deutschland Über Alles: Germany’s Literary Colonization of the U.S. Frontier9. The Problem of Representation: Isadora Duncan Sleeps With the Russian NavyAfterword: Burials and ExhumationsNotesBibliographyIndex

Blake Allmendinger is a professor of English at the University of California–Los Angeles. He is the author of several books, including Imagining the African American West (Nebraska, 2005) and The Melon Capital of the World (Nebraska, 2015).

"Blake Allmendinger's Geographic Personas offers a well-researched and engaging analysis of reinvention and self-transformation in the American West."-Susan Kollin, Western Historical Quarterly "Allmendinger interweaves a bevy of first-hand, contemporaneous accounts with more-recent literary examinations."-K. Edgerton, Choice "An engaging and insightful story."-Richard Stott, Journal of Arizona History “Allmendinger’s chapters combine literary and cultural criticism with brief, pungent biographies. The endnotes alone provide a rich tour of some strange and illuminating byways. The learning is carried very lightly and provides another welcome installment in the Allmendinger project.”-David Wyatt, author of When America Turned: Reckoning with 1968

• Introduction: The Map and the Territory1. Geographic Personas: The Passing of Clarence King2. Lord of the Limber Tongue: The Great Spanish Land Grant Fraud and the Barony of Arizona3. A French Canadian Cowboy: Branding Will James4. Making an Indian: The Case of Sylvester Long5. L’Ouest BohÈme: Willa Cather’s Transnational Prairie6. A Homeless Snail: Yone Noguchi and Japanese Self-Invention7. The Past Is the Biggest Country of All: Remembering Helena Modjeska8. Deutschland Über Alles: Germany’s Literary Colonization of the U.S. Frontier9. The Problem of Representation: Isadora Duncan Sleeps With the Russian NavyAfterword: Burials and ExhumationsNotesBibliographyIndex