English Language and Literature ETDs

Publication Date

Spring 5-6-2021

Abstract

This dissertation examines how Native American and Mexican American women in the greater Southwest negotiated domestic expectations within their own cultures while navigating the demands of encroaching Anglo culture to produce something new: hybrid domesticities rooted in the region, which I call regional domesticities. Chapter 1 focuses on María Amparo Ruiz de Burton and connects her novels Who Would Have Thought It? and The Squatter and the Don to the rhetoric of the Overland Monthly. Chapter 2 explores bicultural collaborations between Native American and Anglo women and focuses on Sarah Winnemucca’s Life Among the Piutes and Helen Sekaqueptewa’s Me and Mine. Chapter 3 examines public preservation through Adina De Zavala’s History and Legends of the Alamo and Jovita González’s Dew on the Thorn and Caballero. Chapter 4 pairs the Sherman Institute with Leslie Marmon Silko’s Gardens in the Dunes to demonstrate how gardens produce hybrid domestic spaces.

Degree Name

English

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

English

First Committee Member (Chair)

Jesse Alemán, PhD

Second Committee Member

Melina Vizcaíno-Alemán, PhD

Third Committee Member

Bernadine Hernández, PhD

Fourth Committee Member

Amanda Zink, PhD

Language

English

Keywords

domesticity, southwest, regional writing, Mexican American, Native American, women

Document Type

Dissertation

Share

COinS