Progress, Modernity, and Cather's Discontents: Queer Futurity, Hope, and Imagining Beyond Hegemony in Willa Cather's Narratives of the American West

Authors

Nora Cahill, Connecticut CollegeFollow

Document Type

Restricted

Advisor

Michelle Neely

Publication Date

2023

Comments

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Abstract

This thesis interrogates the theme of progress in Willa Cather’s novels of the American West. Using queer theory as a critical framework, I argue that Cather’s novels queer the literary elements of setting–both time and place–in order to understand the discontents which arise in a constantly modernizing and progressing American culture. I recognize a connection between these discontents and the modern American culture which separates humans from nonhuman nature. Cather’s novels also recognize this separation. Through her narratives, Cather proposes a return to pastoral ideals of settler colonialism in order to reestablish this relationship between human and non-human nature. However, I identify the settler colonial land ethic of anthropocentrism as a root cause of the separation between humans and their environment. I argue it is impossible to find solutions to this discontent of anthropocentric modernity. Here, I use the queer analytical framework of destabilization to imagine beyond the system of settler colonialism to a future that might reestablish this connection between humans and their environment.

Recommended Citation

Cahill, Nora, "Progress, Modernity, and Cather's Discontents: Queer Futurity, Hope, and Imagining Beyond Hegemony in Willa Cather's Narratives of the American West" (2023). English Honors Papers. 67.
https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/enghp/67