James A. Wojtaszek (University of Minnesota, Morris): Anarchist(,) Woman(,) Writer: Soledad Gustavo and the Cultural Canon.

In recent years, scholars of Spanish literature (such as Maryellen Bieder, Roberta Johnson and Michael Ugarte, among others) have both recognized and lamented the lack and/or misrepresentations of female figures in the literary canon of early twentieth-century Spain. Judith Kirkpatrick suggests that this process of “forgetting” with regard to the cultural contributions of women in this period “says much about the fate of both women and radical reformers after the fall of the [Second] Republic.” Much of this work in this area has focused on long-ignored writers such as Carmen de Burgos (a fiction writer) and Margarita Nelken (an essayist ), both strong advocates of women’s rights. In this paper, I intend to place a similar focus on a long-ignored yet fascinating writer and political activist, Soledad Gustavo.

Alongside her husband Federico Urales (pseudonym of Joan Montseny), Soledad Gustavo (pseudonym of Teresa Mañé) was active and influential in Spain’s anarchist movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The couple published numerous articles and were founders and editors of the journals La Revista Blanca (published in two different incarnations, first in the early 1900s and again in the 1920s) and Tierra y Libertad (Land and Liberty). They also published essays, politically motivated novels designed to spread anarchist ideals in an accessible format, and translations of important essays and works of fiction into Spanish. Their work continued until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, when the family migrated to France and, shortly thereafter, Gustavo died of cancer. While not generally included in the traditional literary canon of peninsular studies, their names are common in socio-historical studies of the period and occasionally in more literary studies such as Lily Litvak’s El cuento anarquista (1880-1911) (Madrid : Taurus, 1982). As is often the case, however, Federico Urales is generally featured prominently while Soledad Gustavo is generally mentioned either as his wife or as the mother of their later famous daughter Federica Montseny. This discounts the fact that Soledad Gustavo, before meeting Federico Urales, had already been publishing articles in El vendaval (The Gale), a local newspaper in her native town on the outskirts of Barcelona, and had established herself as an important figure and the first female lay teacher in Spain. At an anarchist convention in Madrid in 1899, she delivered the keynote address titled “La sociedad futura” (“The Future Society”), in which she spoke against the dangers and corruption inherent in the strong, central state, and advocated radical ideals such women’t rights, free love, and the abolishment of the state in favor of the ideal of self-motivated, independent participation in the affairs of government. This subsequently published speech, as well as a novel titled Las diosas de la tierra (The Goddesses of the Earth) are among the few full-length texts credited to Gustavo (though, interestingly, she later stated that the novel was indeed written by her husband and not by her), and can be found only in the archives of Spain’s National Library. But there is also a wealth of articles published by her that can be found in journals like Revista Blanca, as well as in anthologies, that suggest a vibrant, active and influential voice within Spain’s turn-of-the-century anarchist movement.


Gretchen Ronnow (Wayne State College, Nebraska): ScotsIndians: American Indians As Scottish Highlanders. . . and Vice Versa.

My academic specialty is American Indian literatures. One of the most exciting areas of research in American Indian studies is the heretofore overlooked phenomenon of travel (even trans-Atlantic travel) and cross-fertilization (of ideas and of bloodlines) between Native American Indians and Europeans. Pocahontas living, bearing children, and dying in England comes immediately to mind; more contemporarily is Blackfeet author James Welch writing in The Heartsong of Charging Elk about the Indian members of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show staying in Europe to marry and father children in the 1800s. The “Five Civilized Tribes” had a long tradition of sending their young scholars to Europe to study Greek, Latin, and the classics; Sam Houston was then able to learn Greek and Latin from the Indians. And WWI flying ace and Osage author John Joseph Mathews studied with Rhodes Scholars at Oxford. I recently read that a large percentage of Sitting Bull’s descendants have Scottish names. With some initial research I found many websites on “Scots and the American Indians” and books and journal articles with titles such as The Diamond’s Ace: Scotland and the Native American Indians, “Scots in the American West,” and “Glencoe [the place of a massacre of the house of MacDonald] and the American Indians.” An interesting Nebraska connection is that James R. Murie, born in NE in 1862, had a Scottish father and a Pawnee mother. He was “removed” to Oklahoma with the Pawnee and suffered there until he became a well-known Hampton-educated ethnographer. Beyond the idiosyncratic nature of this investigation is the much larger implication to the American myth of the frontier. It has been assumed that the white “hero” advanced the cause of American civilization—schools, church, government—by “negotiating the margins,” by bringing “wilderness skills” learned from his Native friend (think Lone Ranger and Tonto, Natty Bumpo and Chingachgook) to triumph over any threat to civilization. This entire American mythology needs to be rewritten if the Native “side-kick” were actually a Scotsman.

Jonathan Steinwand (Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota): Indigenous, Transnational, and Local: Hawaiian Identity after the Apology and Federal Recognition.

The colonization of the land and the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy has been well documented by Hawaiian historians (Kame’eleihiwa, Osorio, Silva) and acknowledged by the Apology signed by Congress and President Clinton in 1993. Yet since the Federal Recognition Bill was proposed in 2000 and now as it continues to be debated in Congress, Hawaiian cultural identity has become more fiercely contested along racial lines. At stake is the question whether and/or how the Kanaka Maoli—the indigenous people of Hawai’i—should be recognized and given special treatment in relation to agreements negotiated with the U. S. government over the years. Is such recognition advantageous for the cultural survival of the Kanaka Maoli? The Office of Hawaiian Affairs cites a poll that says 70% of the population of Hawai’i supports federal recognition. What effects will it have on the remaining 90% of the population of the state of Hawai’i? And where does this leave the movement toward a “local” identity among writers who share a common language in Hawaiian pidgin rooted in the multicultural heritage reaching back to immigrant plantation workers? These questions are being negotiated in the current cultural discourse of Hawai’i. Reading Hawaiian literature with these local questions in the background draws together global and national concerns about indigenous rights, transnational or postcolonial identities, and multiracial/multicultural heritage.