Indigenuity - (Critical Indigeneities) by Caroline Wigginton (Paperback)

About the Book

"In this innovative work at the intersection of Indigenous studies, literary studies, book history, and material culture studies, Caroline Wigginton tells a story of the interweavings of Native craftwork and American literatures from their ancient roots to the present. Focused primarily on North America, especially the colonized lands and waters now claimed by the United States, this book argues for the foundational but often-hidden aesthetic orientation of American literary history toward Native craftwork"--

Book Synopsis

For hundreds of years, American artisanship and American authorship were entangled practices rather than distinct disciplines. Books, like other objects, were multisensory items all North American communities and cultures, including Native and settler colonial ones, regularly made and used. All cultures and communities narrated and documented their histories and imaginations through a variety of media. All created objects for domestic, sacred, curative, and collective purposes.

In this innovative work at the intersection of Indigenous studies, literary studies, book history, and material culture studies, Caroline Wigginton tells a story of the interweavings of Native craftwork and American literatures from their ancient roots to the present. Focused primarily on North America, especially the colonized lands and waters now claimed by the United States, this book argues for the foundational but often-hidden aesthetic orientation of American literary history toward Native craftwork. Wigginton knits this narrative to another of Indigenous aesthetic repatriation through the making and using of books and works of material expression. Ultimately, she reveals that Native craftwork is by turns the warp and weft of American literature, interwoven throughout its long history.

Review Quotes

"Indigenuity is an important statement on the necessity of multi-modal, transdisciplinary scholarship across both American studies and Native American and Indigenous studies. . . . [I]t also promises to make significant contributions to a host of other fields, including North American book history, anthropology, musicology, art history, and critical geography studies, to name but a few."--Western Historical Quarterly

"A truly interdisciplinary work that reaches out to the biological sciences as well as the humanities. . . . Indigenuity itself is craftwork, a visually and analytically stunning accomplishment of an advanced scholar."--Papers on the Bibliographical Society of America

"By foregrounding Indigenous craftwork across her primary and secondary sources, Wigginton replicates and honors the kind of praxis she describes throughout her study. . . . [A] beautiful book."--American Literary History

"In reading Indigenuity, one experiences that combination of excitement, grief, confusion, and understanding that archives, texts, and art can provoke. . . . From these moments, [Wigginton] constructed a book with extraordinary reach."--William & Mary Quarterly

"Wigginton offers in Indigenuity an inventive and rigorous work of scholarship, one that--among its countless virtues--attests to how Indigenous studies will continue to invigorate and transform our understanding of the literary, bibliographical, and material histories of North America."--Native American and Indigenous Studies

"Indigenuity is especially relevant to scholars working with Indigenous textile arts, since it offers a critical perspective on the relationship between Native craftworks and American literature within the context of settler colonialism. . . . It is strongly and responsibly grounded in Indigenous studies discourse, contributing to the growing body of scholarship that attends to Native forms as dynamic works that, when read in similar ways to literature, offer important insights into Indigenous resistance and aesthetic activism."--Legacy

"In this well-researched and wide-ranging work, Wigginton provides readers with methodological case studies that analyze 'the foundational but often hidden aesthetic orientation of American literary history to Native craftwork' (p. 1). . . . [A] useful source for students and advanced scholars alike."--North Carolina Historical Review

"A crucial study for scholars of early American literature and culture. . . . [A]n indispensable work in its push to look beyond the media of Indigenous art and (self-)representation to offer innovative models for thinking about how the labor, materials, and aesthetics of Indigenous craftworks shape relationships to place and community."--Early American Literature