Register
If you haven’t already, register to start contributing news and events, and to search the Member Directory. Registration is free, but only open to current members of the American Studies Association.
Group Members
The following people are members of this group:
The following people are administrators of this group:
Member Tools
We're sorry. You are not yet a member of the Mid-America American Studies Association.
Register or login to join this group.
Main | History | Contact
Mid-America Chapter
University of British Columbia historian Paige Raibmon has won the 2007 Mid-America American Studies Association Stone-Suderman Prize for her article entitled “‘Handicapped by Distance and Transportation’: Indigenous Relocation, Modernity, and Time-Space Expansion.” Named for MAASA past presidents Albert E. Stone and Elmer Suderman, two accomplished scholars and writers, the prize this year affirms the quality of all essays in AMERICAN STUDIES as it singles out “‘Handicapped by Distance and Transportation’” as an exceptional published piece.
The Stone-Suderman Prize is one of three awards issued annually by MAASA’s Executive Board. The Katzman-Yetman Prize is awarded to the outstanding graduate student paper presented at a conference or symposium hosted or sponsored by MAASA. The Elizabeth Kolmer Prize recognizes outstanding teaching and mentoring.
According to reviewers for the 2007 Stone-Suderman Prize, Professor Raibmon’s “Handicapped by Distance and Transportation’” is a stunning contribution to scholarship located at the confluence of critical spatial theory, historical methods, and American Studies. One reviewer, a veteran historian, distinguished “‘Handicapped by Distance and Transportation’” as his “favorite article because it did what good scholarly articles should do: it linked a ‘small’ story with a ‘big’ theme.” Raibmon, he notes, “makes clear that the various strategies to ‘develop’ [the Mowachaht and Muchalaht people] into ‘modern’ economic actors was a classic example of a bureaucratic self-fulfilling prophecy, although the prophecy turned out to be false” and “raises the question of to what extent governmental agencies control—or are controlled by—economic power within a modern state.” A rising American Studies scholar applauded the brilliant intervention in history through Mowachaht and Muchalaht sources to show how, in her words, “the lives and stories of these individuals testify, at least, to how ‘unnatural’ and socially-determined processes of economic development always are.” Another reviewer, a critical race theorist and cultural studies scholar, argues that Raibmon “offers a needed critique of postmodern theory by re-examining the factors that shape how people experience geography” and “will likely shape a wide range of American studies scholars as they develop theories and approaches to how technology is rapidly changing how all people are experiencing space.” Yet another reviewer, an historian and gender scholar, noted the critical contribution of “‘Handicapped by Distance and Transportation’,” which through the work of social theorist and SUNY anthropologist David Harvey, she argued, “exposes modernity as a spatial concept and also foregrounds the agency of the Mowachaht and Muchalaht First Nation to define modernity for themselves.” Raibmon’s article, she observed, “worked to destabilize not just the periodization, but the concept of modernity itself, suggesting that American Studies practitioners who use the term ought to take care with its diverse implications.”
“‘Handicapped by Distance and Transportation’” was published in the 2006 thematic issue of AMERICAN STUDIES entitled INDIGENEITY AT THE CROSSROADS OF AMERICAN STUDIES, edited by Norman Yetman and David Katzman. Professor Raibmon’s book AUTHENTIC INDIANS: EPISODES OF ENCOUNTER FROM THE LATE-NINETEENTH-CENTURY NORTHWEST COAST was published by Duke University Press in 2005. Her current project “Reclaiming the Past for Today and Tomorrow: Indigenous Narratives and Knowledge Repatriation” includes the creation of a resource center through extensive community consultation and creative use of a variety of media and technology on the main residential reserve of the Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation at Tsaxana.
By D Anthony Tyeeme Clark, Sun, February 24, 2008 - 6:07 amCategories: News
Quick Links
American Quarterly [official journal site]
American Quarterly [editorial site]