![]() ![]() Comer notes that critics who adopt the "Stegnerian field imaginary" accept Wallace Stegner's notion that to "be born and bred in the West. The latter proposes a new kind of fluidity that is not bound by "ideas about cultural belonging and identity" derived from a particular and specific locale of "arid lands west of the 98th meridian" (159). The former takes for granted the stasis of geographic space and the stability of identities formed on the basis of authentic ties to that space. Comer calls the first of these two modes the "Stegnerian field imaginary" and the second she calls "critical regionalism" (160). (1) In a recent issue of American Literary History, Krista Comer identifies two distinct modes used by scholars to resolve (or at least mitigate) those problems. Any consideration of critical conversations about Southwestern American literary studies as a field over the last decade produces a sense of scholars' pre-occupation with problems of geography and authenticity. ![]()
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