Research Projects
Religious Studies professor Mark Cladis recently published two articles pertaining to Laguna Pueblo writer Leslie Marmon Silko:
1) “Leslie Silko: Nuclear Landscapes, Environmental Catastrophe, and the Power of Indigenous Storytelling,” Ecokritike 1 (2024): 35-58
2) “The World in Ruins: Wordsworth, Du Bois, and Silko,” Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal (2022) 105 (4): 440–467 https://doi.org/10.5325/soundings.105.4.0440
The first article is largely written in the mode of listening: of attending to Silko and the stories she weaves from her life and her Indigenous traditions. In the act of listening, questions are posed: What is the connection between having the stories and having sources of life and resilience, especially in times of oppression and despair? The power of Indigenous storytelling is explored as sources of healing, resistance, and transformation. There is also a focus on nuclear storied landscape, first as found in Silko’s novel Ceremony and then in Almanac of the Dead. Finally, the conclusion reflects on the role of curative storytelling and the more-than-human in assisting humans survive and even flourish as we seek to make a just home in the face of such catastrophes as climate change and nuclearism.
The second article shows how for W. E. B. Du Bois and Leslie Silko, ruins are sites of haunting pain and injustice as well as of liberatory hope and renovation. Reflecting on the image of the ruin in their writings against the backdrop of Romanticism, this article depicts two Romantic conceptions of ruins: the picturesque ruin and the Wordsworthian prophetic ruin. Against these contrasting employments of the ruin, the article discusses how Du Bois and Silko subvert the picturesque ruin and radically extend and transform the prophetic ruin. The article then claims that some ruins are so catastrophic, it is not much of an exaggeration to speak of a ruined planet due to such forces as white supremacy, settler colonialism, and climate change. The present article concludes by reflecting on the work of renovation— that is, rebuilding in the shadows of the ruin having learned from its lessons, history, and ghosts.