INVENTING DESTINY

From the University Press of Kansas. The mythmakers of US expansion have expressed “manifest destiny” in many different ways—and so have its many discontents. A multidisciplinary study that delves into these contrasts and contradictions, Inventing Destiny offers a broad yet penetrating cultural history of nineteenth-century US territorial acquisition—a history that gives voice to the underrepresented actors who significantly complicated US narratives of empire, from Native Americans and Anglo-American women to anti- and non-national expansionists. The contributors—established and emerging scholars from history, American studies, literary studies, art history, and religious studies—make use of source materials and techniques as various as artwork, religion, geospatial analysis, interior colonialism, and storytelling alongside fresh readings of traditional historical texts. For more information see the Inventing Destiny  page

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CURRENTLY

I presented “The Uncanny Expanse: The Dark Sublime of the Great Plains as Ecogothic Defiance of US Expansion” at the 2025 conference of the Western Literature Association at Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. This year's conference was particularly fruitful with numerous panels dedicated to the gothic in western literature. During the trip, I took the opportunity to visit the Washita Battlefield National Historic Site. While there, I could not help but hear the words of Lewis Ringe's "Western Plains" (1838) that equated US expansion to a destroying prairie fire. For details, see News. 

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ELSEWHERES

Texas on Film: 12 Mighty Orphans and the trap of white nostalgia with a brief profile of Torres brothers who played on the Mighty Mites team Click here.