Reviewed by:

• Approaches to Teaching the Novels of James Fenimore Cooper ed. by Stephen Carl Arch and Keat Murray
• Theresa Strouth Gaul (bio)

Teaching James Fenimore Cooper's novels in an undergraduate classroom today is daunting, and we know the reasons why: convoluted plots, unfamiliar historical contexts, archaic and circuitous language, lengthy narratives, and racial and gender politics ranging from ambiguous to problematic to offensive from our current point of view. The contributors to Approaches to Teaching the Novels of James Fenimore Cooper, edited by Stephen Carl Arch and Keat Murray, are realistic about the challenges of teaching Cooper but remain undaunted. Together, they seek "to empower students to engage the ideas" at the center of his novels while demonstrating Cooper's relevance today in a number of contemporary debates, including "the nature of democracy, the rights of marginalized peoples, and our relation to the natural world" (1).

The volume primarily targets instructors of upper-level courses for English majors, though a few essays address approaches suitable for graduate courses (Rochelle Raineri Zuck), general education offerings (Elaina Anne Frulla and David W. Hartwig), or international students (Anna Scannavini). An online survey of instructors who frequently teach Cooper's novels helped the editors determine an array of resources with which to open the book. These extremely helpful materials include an introduction outlining the ups and downs of Cooper's career and reception, a comprehensive and chronological list of Cooper's publications, a literature review of selected significant critical readings, commentary on the appropriateness for teaching of available editions, and a list of all the film adaptations of Cooper's works accompanied by overviews of the most significant ones. The editors [End Page 179] organized essays into sections on history and culture, the environment, language and form, and visuality and cinema. Altogether, essays in the book provide approaches to teaching eleven of Cooper's novels: the Leather-stocking Tales (1823–41), The Crater (1847), The Pilot (1824), Lionel Lincoln (1825), Satanstoe (1845), The Spy (1821), The Ways of the Hour (1850), and Wyandotté (1843). As one might expect, The Last of the Mohicans (1826) receives the most attention as the focus of six of the seventeen essays.

The most exciting essays in the book are those that offer fresh approaches to teaching Cooper. Standouts in this regard are Murray's essay explaining how to support students in applying an animal studies approach to The Pioneers and Matthew Wynn Sivil's foregrounding of the "American apocalyptic tradition" in teaching The Crater by focusing on "the human experience of environmental degradation" (93). Barbara Mann creatively examines Cooper's contributions to the genre of detective fiction in The Ways of the Hour, and Christopher J. Lukasik considers how students' own engagement with media and visual imagery can act as a lever to consider Cooper's positioning at a key moment in media history when visual images began to proliferate and circulate in new ways.

As one might expect and hope, most of the essays grapple to one degree or another with the important task of introducing students to the historical contexts within which Cooper wrote and to which he responded, including race relations (Sarah Sillin), ethnocentrism (Donna Richardson), multiculturalism (Robert Daly), and westward expansion (Michael Demson). Given this sustained focus across the volume, it is noticeable that few essays center Indigenous voices, authors, or scholarship in their efforts to complicate and elucidate Cooper's works. Betty Booth Donahue (Cherokee Nation) presents a "Native interpretation" of The Pioneers to compellingly model how one could demonstrate to students "an American Indian literary influence" in Cooper's works and engage them with Native cultures more broadly. Zuck points to three Indigenous-authored texts as she lays out her method to have students reconstruct debates about sovereignty and Indigenous land rights, and Paul Gutjahr explores the politics of casting Russell Means in Michael Mann's film adaptation of The Last of the Mohicans (1992). But beyond this, there is remarkably little visible influence of cutting-edge insights emerging from the field of Native American...

审阅者：

• 詹姆斯·费尼莫尔·库珀编辑的小说教学方法。作者：斯蒂芬·卡尔·阿奇和基特·默里
• 特蕾莎·斯特劳斯·高尔（简介）

今天在本科生课堂上教授詹姆斯·费尼莫尔·库珀的小说是令人畏惧的，我们知道其中的原因：错综复杂的情节、不熟悉的历史背景、古老而迂回的语言、冗长的叙述，以及从我们当前的观点来看，从模棱两可到有问题到令人反感的种族和性别政治。观点看法。由斯蒂芬·卡尔·阿奇和基特·默里编辑的《詹姆斯·费尼莫尔·库珀小说教学方法》的撰稿人对教授库珀的挑战很现实，但仍然无所畏惧。他们共同寻求“让学生能够参与其小说的中心思想”，同时展示库珀在当今许多当代辩论中的相关性，包括“民主的本质、边缘化人民的权利以及我们与自然的关系”。世界”（1）。

该书主要针对英语专业高级课程的教师，但也有几篇文章讨论了适合研究生课程（Rochelle Raineri Zuck）、通识教育课程（Elaina Anne Frulla 和 David W. Hartwig）或国际学生（Anna Scannavini）的方法。 ）。对经常教授库珀小说的教师进行的在线调查帮助编辑们确定了打开这本书的一系列资源。这些非常有用的材料包括概述库珀职业生涯和接受的起伏的简介、库珀出版物的全面且按时间顺序排列的列表、对选定的重要批判性读物的文献综述、对现有版本教学适当性的评论以及一系列库珀作品的所有电影改编作品均附有对最重要作品的概述。编辑们[完第179页]将文章分为历史和文化、环境、语言和形式、视觉和电影等部分。总而言之，书中的文章提供了教授库珀十一部小说的方法：《皮袜故事》（1823-41）、《火山口》（1847）、《飞行员》（1824）、《莱昂内尔·林肯》（1825）、《撒旦斯托》（1845）、《 《间谍》（1821 年）、《时势之道》（1850 年）和怀恩多特（1843 年）。正如人们所预料的那样，《最后的莫希干人》（1826）作为十七篇文章中六篇的焦点受到了最多的关注。

书中最令人兴奋的文章是那些提供了库珀教学新方法的文章。这方面的杰出作品是默里（Murray）的文章，解释了如何支持学生将动物研究方法应用到《先驱者》中，以及马修·韦恩·西维尔（Matthew Wynn Sivil）在《火山口》教学中通过关注“人类对环境退化的经历”来强调“美国末日传统” （93） ）。芭芭拉·曼 (Barbara Mann) 在《时势之道》(The Ways of the Hour)中创造性地审视了库珀对侦探小说类型的贡献，克里斯托弗·J·卢卡西克 (Christopher J. Lukasik) 则考虑了学生自己对媒体和视觉图像的参与如何成为考虑库珀在媒体关键时刻的定位的杠杆。视觉图像开始以新的方式扩散和传播的历史。

正如人们所期望和希望的那样，大多数论文都在一定程度上致力于向学生介绍库珀写作和回应的历史背景的重要任务，包括种族关系（莎拉·西林）、民族中心主义（唐娜·理查森） ）、多元文化主义（罗伯特·戴利）和向西扩张（迈克尔·德姆森）。鉴于整本书的持续关注，值得注意的是，很少有文章以土著声音、作者或学术为中心，努力使库珀的作品复杂化和阐明。贝蒂·布斯·多纳休（切罗基族）对《拓荒者》进行了“本土诠释” ，以令人信服的方式向学生展示库珀作品中的“美洲印第安人文学影响”，并让他们更广泛地接触本土文化。扎克（Zuck）指出了三本原住民创作的文本，她阐述了让学生重建有关主权和原住民土地权利的辩论的方法，保罗·古特贾尔（Paul Gutjahr）探讨了在迈克尔·曼（Michael Mann）改编的电影《最后的莫西干人》（1992）中扮演拉塞尔·米恩斯（Russell Means）的政治因素。 。但除此之外，美国原住民领域出现的前沿见解几乎没有明显的影响力……