Cooper Panels at the ALA Conference

Updated August 2006

The American Literature Association holds an annual Conference, which alternates between the East and West Coasts. Since 1990 the James Fenimore Cooper Society has organized a three-panel paper at each Conference. Beginning in 1993 most of these papers have been published as James Fenimore Cooper Society Miscellaneous Papers, and we are happy to include most of them on our website.

In this archive the available papers since 1990 are stored chronologically. They may, however, also be browsed in four indexes: by (a) author, (b) title of Cooper book chiefly involved, (c) selected subject topics, and (d) other authors who are compared with Cooper. These may be accessed at Articles & Papers. In transcribing papers, obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected, but spelling and grammar have been left as the authors intended. Only rarely have direct quotations been checked and/or corrected. Tables and charts have been modified to suit the website form. Illustrations in the original have been retained (but often modified as to size and placement) when discussed in the text, or when especially germane to the discussion; occasionally new illustrations have been substituted or added.

Institutional affiliations are as of the time the paper was given.

1990 ALA Conference -- San Diego, May 1990

Chair - Hugh C. MacDougall (James Fenimore Cooper Society)

1. Lapp, Peter C. (Queen's University), Cooper's Doubloon: The Domains of Language in Cooper's Major Works
2. Morton, Richard (McMaster University), Perception and Reality: The Novelist, the Deerslayer and the Reader Deerslayer deals with surface appearances and hidden realities. [1990 ALA COOPER PANEL]
3. Schachterle, Lance (Worcester Polytechnic Institute), Cooper Revises the First Great American Novel Cooper's careful revisions of The Spy over many years. [1990 ALA COOPER PANEL]

1991 ALA Conference -- Washington, DC, May 1991

Chair - Hugh C. MacDougall (James Fenimore Cooper Society)

1. Bailey, Brigitte (University of New Hampshire), "Like Another Wife" : Cooper, Cole, and the Italian Landscape [revised version published in David C. Miller, ed., American Iconology: New Approaches to Nineteenth-Century Art and Literature, Yale University Press, 1993, pp. 92-111, as "The Protected Witness: Cole, Cooper and the Tourist's View of the Italian Landscape."]
2. Madison, Robert D. (United States Naval Academy), Cooper, Hennepin, and the Inland Sea.
3. Rust, Richard D., (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), The Art of The Pathfinder. The novel as a carefully crafted work of art. [1991 ALA COOPER PANEL]

1992 ALA Conference -- San Diego, May 1992

Chair - Hugh C. MacDougall (James Fenimore Cooper Society)

1. Engell, John (San Jose State University), Neither Book nor Moccasin: Reading Sound in The Last of the Mohicans.
2. Gladsky, Thomas S. (Central Missouri State University), Cooper's Other Americans: Cultural Diversity and American Homogeneity. Cooper shared many of the Nativist, anti-foreigner, views of his time. [1992 ALA COOPER PANEL]
3. Wallace, James D. (Boston College), Cooper and Slavery. Complexity of Cooper's anti-slavery views, as shown in Satanstoe. [1992 ALA COOPER PANEL]

1993 ALA Conference -- Baltimore, May 1993

Chair - Hugh C. MacDougall (James Fenimore Cooper Society)

1. Madison, Robert D. (United States Naval Academy), Wish-ton-Wish: Muck or Melancholy. Sources of The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish and why Cooper called the whip-poor-will a wish-ton-wish, which is a plains Indian name for prairie dog. [1993 ALA COOPER PANEL]
2. Kalayjian, Patricia Larson (California State University, Dominguez Hills), Cooper and Sedgwick: Rivalry or Respect?. Relations between Cooper and Catharine Maria Sedgwick. [1993 ALA COOPER PANEL]
3. Salamon, Linda B. (Essex Community College), "A Life in the Woods" : Failure of Leadership in The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish, The Pioneers, and The Crater. Religion and historical process in Cooper's views of leadership. [1993 ALA COOPER PANEL]

1994 ALA Conference -- San Diego, June 1994

Chair - Hugh C. MacDougall (James Fenimore Cooper Society)

1. Bagby, George F. (Hampden-Sydney College), Kindred Spirits: Cooper and Thoreau Similarities in ethical, political, economic, and environmental spheres. [1994 ALA COOPER PANEL]
2. Michaelsen, Scott (University of Texas, El Paso), The Color Line, Beavers and the Destructuring of White Identity in Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. Complexities of color between "black" beavers and bears, "white" Europeans, and "red" Indians. [1994 ALA COOPER PANEL]
3. Franklin, Wayne (Northeastern University), Cooper and New York's Dutch Heritage. Cooper's exceptional understanding of New York Dutch rural building practices. [1994 ALA COOPER PANEL]

1995 ALA Conference -- Baltimore, May 1995

Chair - Hugh C. MacDougall (James Fenimore Cooper Society)

1. Madison, Robert D. (United States Naval Academy), Cooper, Bancroft, and the Voorhees Court Martial. Cooper's involvement in the 1845 Voorhees court martial spurred the founding of the Naval Academy, but disillusioned Cooper with the Navy. [1995 ALA COOPER PANEL]
2. Schramer, James J. (Youngstown State University), "A Bold Stroke against the Wilderness" : Wyandotté and Cooper's Critique of the Jeffersonian Ideology of Domestic Production . The failure of Jeffersonian agrarianism in Wyandotté, and in Cooper's America. [1995 ALA COOPER PANEL]
3. Starobin, Christina (Ramapo College), Reading Cooper. How a teacher learned to enjoy Cooper -- and to impart that enjoyment to students. [1995 ALA COOPER PANEL]

1996 ALA Conference -- San Diego, June 1996

Chair - Deborah J. Dietrich (California State University at Fullerton)

1. Axelrad, Allan M. (California State University at Fullerton), Cooper, Aristocracy, and Capitalism. Cooper not only despised "aristocracy", but saw it in the growing commercial/political oligarchy of American capitalism. [1996 ALA COOPER PANEL]
2. Mazel, David (Louisiana State University), Shooting as Performative Speech in The Last of the Mohicans. The "speech" of Hawkeye's gun likened to the Spanish Requeirimiento placing American Indians under the Spanish crown. [1996 ALA COOPER PANEL]
3. MacDougall, Hugh C. (James Fenimore Cooper Society), First and Last Tales: "Imagination" and "The Lake Gun". Introduction to two little-known Cooper short stories. [1996 ALA COOPER PANEL]

1997 ALA Conference -- Baltimore, May 1997

Chair - Hugh C. MacDougall (James Fenimore Cooper Society)

1. Dekker, George G. (Stanford University), Border and Frontier: Tourism in Scott's Guy Mannering and Cooper's The Pioneers. Two approaches to the "tourist" and cultural exoticism. [1997 ALA COOPER PANEL]
2. Ganter, Granville (City University of New York), Battles of Rhetoric: Oratory and Identity in Cooper's Last of the Mohicans. Use of "Indian rhetoric" by Cooper, and by Indians themselves. [1997 ALA COOPER PANEL]
3. Wallace, James D. (Boston College), Cooper on Corporal Punishment. Flogging, whether at sea or of a slave, is morally corrupting to the flogger. [1997 ALA COOPER PANEL]

1998 ALA Conference -- San Diego, May 1998

Chair - Hugh C. MacDougall (James Fenimore Cooper Society)

1. Mann, Barbara (University of Toledo), Man with a Cross: Hawkeye Was a "Half-Breed". Cooper intended Natty Bumppo as being of mixed European/Indian race. [1998 ALA COOPER PANEL]
2. Schramer, James J. (Youngstown State University), "A Union of Art and Nature" : Cooper and American Landscape Aesthetics. The Coopers (James and Susan), landscape, and gardens. [1998 ALA COOPER PANEL]
3. Shour, Nancy C. (Independent Scholar), Heirs to the Wild and Distant Past: Landscape and Historiography in James Fenimore Cooper's The Pioneers. Cooper's landscapes record a past to be preserved for coming generations. [1998 ALA COOPER PANEL]

1999 ALA Conference -- Baltimore, May 1999

Chair - Robert D. Madison (United States Naval Academy)

1. Kalter, Susan (University of California at San Diego), The Last of the Mohicans as Contemporary Theory: James Fenimore Cooper's Philosophy of Language. Cooper assumes a linguistic hierarchy reflecting mental and political power. [1999 ALA COOPER PANEL]
2. Madison, Robert D. (United States Naval Academy), Submission and Restoration in The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish. Historical background to the novel. [1999 ALA COOPER PANEL]
3. Person, Leland S. (University of Alabama), Masculinities on the Warpath: Gender and Race in The Deerslayer [not available for publication here]

2000 ALA Conference -- Long Beach, California, May 2000

Chair - Hugh C. MacDougall (James Fenimore Cooper Society)

1. Dekker, George (Stanford University), Romantic Tourism, Fictionality, and The Water Witch [not available for publication here]
2. Harthorn, Steven (University of Tennessee, Knoxville), "Few Get as Far South as I Have Been": Stimson in James Fenimore Cooper's The Sea Lions. The annoyingly pious Stimson is essential to Cooper's religious message. [2000 ALA COOPER PANEL]
3. Owen, William (Ryerson Polytechnic University, Toronto), Natty Changes His Will: Legacies and Beneficiaries in The Deerslayer and The Prairie. Why Natty leaves his possessions to Hard-Heart in The Prairie, but retroactively makes Chingachgook's bride his heir in The Deerslayer. [2000 ALA COOPER PANEL]

2001 ALA Conference -- Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 2001

1. Buinicki, Martin T. (University of Iowa), 'mere articles of trade': Literary Property, Copyright, and Democracy. Cooper's views on copyright law. [2001 ALA COOPER PANEL]
2. Wolfe, Steven (University of Houston), The Path to a New Environmental Consciousness in The Deerslayer. Deerslayer's inability to protect his beloved Glimmerglass is intended "to change not only our behaviour but our entire means of thinking about the natural environment." [2001 ALA COOPER PANEL]
3. Zhang, Aiping (California State University at Chico), James Fenimore Cooper: A Rediscovered American Writer in China. China's recent "Westward Rush" has sparked a new interest, popular and scholarly, in Cooper. [2001 ALA COOPER PANEL]

2002 ALA Conference -- Long Beach, California, May 2002

1. Mann, Barbara Alice (University of Toledo), Spirits of Sky, Spirits of Earth: the Spirituality of Chingachgook. Native American dualistic cosmology, rarely noted by Euro-Americans, reflected in Chingachgook's behavior in The Pioneers. [2002 ALA COOPER PANEL]
2. Schramer, James J. (Youngstown State University), James Fenimore Cooper and the Myth of the Citizen Soldier/Sailor. Cooper and the ambiguous myth of the American citizen/soldier/patriot in The Spy and The Pilot. [2002 ALA COOPER PANEL]
3. Watts, Edward (Michigan State University), Cooper, Richardson, and the Frontiers of Nationalism. Cooper's nationalism both influenced and was modified in the Canadian nationalism of John Richardson's Indian tales Wacousta (1832), and The Canadian Brothers (1840). [2002 ALA COOPER PANEL]

2003 ALA Conference -- Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 2003

1. Schachterle, Lance (Editor-in-Chief, Cooper Edition; Worcester Polytechnic Institute), "Cooper and His Collaborators: Recovering Cooper's Final Intentions for His Fiction" [Abstract only] Contrary to common belief, Cooper was very concerned with the accuracy of his printed texts. [2003 COOPER PANEL]
2. Norwood, Lisa West (Drake University), Fragments, Ruins and Artifacts of the Past: The Reconstruction of Reading in The Deerslayer. Readers of the novel must call both on their own previous Leatherstocking readings, and on the words, signs, and symbols of the past presented in the book itself. [2003 COOPER PANEL]
3. Sweet, Nancy (Columbia University), "Sweet but Commanding": The Disobedient Daughter in Cooper's The Pioneers. Elizabeth Temple as rebellious but virtuous heroine. [2003 COOPER PANEL]

2004 ALA Conference -- San Francisco, California, May 2004

1. Harthorn, Stephen P. (Univeristy of Tennessee), Truth and Consequences: James Fenimore Cooper on Scott, Columbus, Bumppo, and Professional Authorship. Cooper's assertions of dishonesty in Walter Scott, and his claims to veracity in Mercedes of Castille and The Deerslayer. [2004 COOPER PANEL]
2. Lukasik, Christopher (Boston University), The Invisible Aristocrat: Visualizing Character in Cooper's Early Fiction. [Abstract only] In Cooper's early novels the reading of the face is not to discover moral dissimulation, but rather social status. [2004 COOPER PANEL]
3. Norwood, Lisa West (Drake University), Cooper's Pacific: The Crater and Theories of History in the South Seas. The Crater deals with a variety of narratives, of America in the Pacific, of natural history, and of of human experiences of history, which differ from those in Melville's Typee. [2004 COOPER PANEL]

2005 ALA Conference -- Boston, Massachusetts, May 2005

1. McWilliams, John (Middlebury College), Bragging and Dodge-ing in America, or Domestic Manners As Found. Cooper's dismay at American manners in the 1830s, as reflected in Homeward Bound and Home as Found. [2005 COOPER PANEL]
2. Sivils, Matthew Wynn (Oklahoma State University), Bears, Culture-Crossing, and the Leatherstocking Tales. Cooper's use of bears as symbols to discuss cross-cultural and cross-racial transitions. [2005 COOPER PANEL]
3. Suzuki, Erin M. (University of California, Los Angeles). Paradise Lost: James Fenimore Cooper and the Pursuit of Empire in the American Pacific. The fatal attraction of Empire in Cooper's The Prairie and, especially, The Crater. [2005 COOPER PANEL]

2006 ALA Conference -- San Francisco, California, May 2006

1. Iglesias, Luis (University of Southern Mississippi>, The "keen-eyed criticof the ocean": James Fenimore Cooper's Invention of the Sea Novel. The Pilot and The Red Rover as opening a new phase in American literature. [2006 COOPER PANEL]
2. Permaul, Nadesan (University of California, Berkeley). James Fenimore Cooper and the American National Myth. Cooper as designer of an essentially racist American myth, as expresed in The Pioneers. [2006 COOPER PANEL]
3. Kalter, Susan (Illinois State University). Clothing The Prairie in Furs: The International Trade Contexts of Cooper's Western Novel. [Not available for publication here].

Return to Top of Page