Unconventional Politics

"Dean deftly weaves together scholarship on nineteenth-century American literature, current debates in Native American and Indigenous Studies about the ideological work of literary texts, and theories of literary form and aesthetics. In so doing, she re-places considerations of literary form and aesthetics alongside questions of political and cultural work."—Siobhan Senier, author of Voices of American Indian Assimilation and Resistance: Helen Hunt Jackson, Sarah Winnemucca, and Victoria Howard

"Unconventional Politics makes a substantial contribution to the field of nineteenth-century literary studies. Specifically, Dean offers a new way of understanding texts both within and in debate with conventions like sentimentality or the captivity narrative."—Cari Carpenter, author of Seeing Red: Anger, Sentimentality, and American Indians

"Unconventional Politics eloquently demonstrates the significance and range of its writers and their work, and it exemplifies the value of case studies which calibrate poetics, biography, the social, and the political."—American Literary History

"Dean's writing is focused, detailed, and unrelenting . . . [F]or anyone interested in nineteenth-century protest writing or feminist contributions to Native American studies, this book comes highly recommended."—Native American and Indigenous Studies

"Unconventional Politics considers the boundaries of literary mediums for women's political agendas and urges recovery work to move beyond the politics or aesthetics debate to consider how politics and aesthetics may be present, critiqued, and valued in nineteenth-century women's writing . . . Opens up new avenues for future scholarship in boarding school newspapers and national women's magazines."—Legacy: Journal of American Women Writers

"Dean develops a feminist, cross-cultural, 'Native-centered reading practice' in order to unpack the activism and modes of resistance among her chosen writers."—American Literature