Review of \u3ci\u3eBirthing a Nation: Gender, Creativity, and the West in American Literature\u3c/i\u3e By Susan J. Rosowski

Susan Rosowski, best known for her authoritative work on Willa Cather, establishes in Birthing a Nation her status as an authoritative scholar of American literature and cultural history more broadly. In a series of concise chapters on Margaret Fuller, Cather, Jean Stafford, the Classic (masculine) Western, and Marilynne Robinson, Rosowski identifies the centrality of the West to American conceptions of national identity. Borrowing an evocative phrase from Jane Tompkins\u27s West of Everything, she proposes what is surely a better way of thinking of its meaning than the terms made familiar by popular Westerns- violence\u27 aloofness, masculine exclusivity. The controlling metaphor for that better way turns out to be not so much the one suggested by the title as a metaphor of conversation. The Western is about language far more than it is about land. In the standard popular forms in which it has served as a source of pervasive cultural arrogance, the Western has claimed for its heroes the right to define the terms of a one-way, but markedly laconic, discourse in which others are to remain silent. That silencing of others, and in particular the female other, has been reflected in the silencing of women writers such as Stafford and even Cather, canonical though she has now become. Although Stafford\u27s literary milieu was the Rockies and Cather\u27s (in part) the Great Plains, they are still not readily thought of in connection with the Western. Stafford is indeed, as Rosowski tellingly points out, simply unmentioned in standard histories of the literature of the West. The reason is that they are outsiders to the formula. Refusing to genuflect toward the controlling and inevitably violent hero, they propose instead that a whole range of experiences of the West are all equally valid, that sharing is more satisfactory than excluding, that conversation is more productive than domination. If this vision occasionally seems idealized, it is after all an inspiriting vision and one that Rosowski firmly grounds in a series of knowledgeable and persuasive readings. I t would be hard to argue that the vision she proposes is not, or would not have been, a better way than the exploitation and despoliation that have characterized much of American history. One misses Mary Austin in this book. With her Walking Woman, Seyavi the Basket Maker, and other free-moving, gravid figures, Austin might have been truly pivotal in the argument here. It may be that by refiguring myths of creativity into the figures of the Muse, the midwife, and the Earth Mother Cather creates a new myth for America, but Austin created it before her-not to mention Native myths such as Thinking Woman. Such objections, however, are really yes, but also responses illustrating how genuinely (but gently) provocative Rosowski\u27s pondering of the West truly is. She leads us into the kind of creative conversation she suggests as the better way. Through such original departures as a chapter on the Cather family letters, demonstrating the importance of the extended family on the frontier, and a thoughtful linkage of Robinson\u27s nonfiction Mother Country to the celebrated Housekeeping, Rosowski shows us how to gestate new meanings of West

Among Critics

On the critical reception of Cather’s novels over the decades, briefly mentioning Hemingway’s well-known attack on Cather for writing about combat in One of Ours (1922) without having experienced it directly

Janis P. Stout papers

Janis Pitts Stout (1939-) was an English professor and administrator at a number of research universities, most notably Rice University, Texas A & M, and Auburn University, from 1973 until her retirement in 2002. She produced three novels, compiled and edited a calendar based on the works of Willa Cather, and published six scholarly works, including Katherine Anne Porter: A Sense of the Times (1995). Dr. Stout's papers consist almost exclusively of material related to the research and publication of her 1995 book on Katherine Anne Porter. Included is correspondence regarding permissions from her book, a copy of the book proposal evaluation, other scholarly work on Katherine Anne Porter by Dr. Stout, and a portion of Dr. Stout's research notes. Some general correspondence related to Dr. Stout's book is also included

Exact computational analyses for adaptive designs

Abstract We show how to compute optimal designs and exact analyses of allocation rules for various sequential allocation problems. The problems we have solved include parameter estimation in an industrial scenario, and testing in a clinical trial. Our computational approach incorporates backward induction, dynamic programming, and a new technique of forward induction. By utilizing e cient algorithms and careful implementation, we are able to determine exact solutions to practical problems previously approached only through simulation or approximation

Optimal allocation for estimating the mean of a bivariate polynomial", Seq

Suppose we wish to estimate the mean of some polynomial function of random variables from two independent Bernoulli populations, the parameters of which, themselves, are modeled as independent beta random variables. It is assumed that the total sample size for the experiment is fixed, but that the number of experimental units observed from each population may be random. This problem arises, for example, when estimating the fault tolerance of a system by testing its components individually. Using a decision theoretic approach, we seek to minimize the Bayes risk that arises from using a squared error loss function. The Bayes estimator can be determined in a straightforward manner, so the problem of optimal estimation reduces, therefore, to a problem of optimal allocation of the samples between the two populations. This can be solved via dynamic programming. Similar programming techniques are utilized to evaluate properties of a number of ad hoc allocation strategies that might also be considered for use in this problem. Two sample polynomials are analyzed along with a number of examples indicating the effects of different prior parameter settings. The effects of differences between prior parameters used in the design and analysis stages of the experiment are also examined. For the polynomials considered, the adaptive strategies are found to be especially robust. We discuss computational techniques that facilitate such analyses by permitting rapid re-evaluation of strategies. Capabilities of this sort encourage people to explore designs more fully and to consider them from a number of different viewpoints. 1

Sequential Allocation with Minimal Switching

This paper describes algorithms for the design of sequential experiments where extensive switching is undesirable. Given an objective function to minimize by sampling between Bernoulli populations, two different models are considered. The constraint model optimizes the tradeoff of the maximum number of switches vs. the objective function, while the cost model optimizes the tradeoff for the expected number of switches. For each model, an algorithm is developed which produces the optimal sequential experiment. The algorithms are quite general, and give users flexibility in incorporating practical considerations in the design of experiments. To show the usability of these algorithms, they are applied to a bandit problem and an estimation problem. It is observed that the expected number of switches grows approximately as the square root of the sample size, for sample sizes up to a few hundred. It is also observed that one can dramatically reduce the number of switches without substantially..