Billy J Stratton | University of Denver (original) (raw)

Books by Billy J Stratton

The Fictions of Stephen Graham Jones: A Critical Companion, University of New Mexico Press, 2016, 2016

Even as Stephen Graham Jones generates a dizzying range of brilliant fiction, his work remains st... more Even as Stephen Graham Jones generates a dizzying range of brilliant fiction, his work remains strikingly absent from scholarly conversations about Native and western American literature, owing in part to his unapologetic embrace of popular genres such as horror and science fiction. Steeped in dense narrative references, literary and historical allusions, and experimental postmodern stylings, his fiction informs a broad array of literary and popular conversations.

The Fictions of Stephen Graham Jones is the first collection of scholarship on Jones's ever-expanding oeuvre. The diverse methodologies that inform these essays--from Native American critical theory to poststructuralism and gothic noirism--illuminate the unique complexity of Jones's narrative worlds while positioning his works within broader conversations in literary studies and popular culture. Jones challenges at every turn the notions of what constitutes Native American literature and what it means to be a Native American writer. Contributing editor Billy J. Stratton foregrounds these heavily contested questions and their ongoing relevance to readers and critics alike.

University of Arizona Press, 2013

Articles by Billy J Stratton

Transmotion, 2022

While I initially planned for this to be an interview, it was really a conversation and one that ... more While I initially planned for this to be an interview, it was really a conversation and one that occurred at a pretty cool Mexican joint in Denver near DU's campus before Stephen visited one of my classes to talk about Ledfeather. Be sure to check out El Tejado if you're ever in the area—they make a mean michelada!

The transcript included here follows the conversation as it took place—minus the food orders and background conversation, which any postmodern writer would usually revel in, as well as the divvying of sopapillas—while being faithful to the cadence of language. Only a few minor changes were made for clarity and context. Given the occasion for the meeting and visit, the focus touches on Ledfeather, and then moves on to a discussion of Jones's more recent works.

My primary interests were in the turn towards the genre of horror since Mongrels—a subject he is always eager to discuss, while also delving into other related matters such a weird fiction, the publishing industry, the function of literature, and as always, the future of humanity. You know, as Blink 182 calls it, "all the small things."

Los Angeles Review of Books, 2021

Los Angeles Review of Books, 2019

Transmotion, 2019

Among Native American writers and scholars, none have been more internationally engaged than Gera... more Among Native American writers and scholars, none have been more internationally engaged than Gerald Vizenor. From his his earliest works of haiku poetry, Two Wings the Butterfly (1962), Seventeen Chirps (1964), and Empty Swings (1967), to the publication of novels such as Griever: An American Monkey King in China (1990), The Heirs of Columbus (1991), Hiroshima Bugi (2010), and Blue Ravens (2016), Vizenor has sought give his characters a prominent transnational presence. In Blue Ravens, the first of a trilogy of novels addressing the experiences of Anishinaabe soldiers, including some of Vizenor’s actual relatives, he gives narrative substance to Jodi Bryd’s notion of the “transit” of colonial violence through what his narrator terms the European wars of the “empire demon more sinister than the ice monster” (109). In Vizenor’s body of work, this is not not just an intervention into a burgeoning area of critical concern, but perhaps, the culmination of a broader socio-historical criti...

Los Angeles Review of Books, 2018

Transmotion, 2017

Transcript of a roundtable conversation and written analysis reflecting on Glen Coulthard's book ... more Transcript of a roundtable conversation and written analysis reflecting on Glen Coulthard's book Red Skins, White Masks .

American Book Review, 38.1 (2016), 3.

co-author, Eleni Sikelianos, Denver Quarterly 49:1 (2014).

In recent years, Native, Indigenous, First Nations, and Aboriginal scholars and writers have forg... more In recent years, Native, Indigenous, First Nations, and Aboriginal scholars and writers have forged alliances to initiate and support decolonization efforts and the reassertion of native survivance. Native and non-Native scholars have responded to modern challenges by reconceptualizing notions of peoplehood, identity, and nationalism. Following these intellectual contours, rather than conceiving of native culture as totalizing, static, and/or incommensurable—as always already foreign—responsive readings informed by the critical work of Gerald Vizenor can support more sophisticated understandings of native literary production while revealing sites of native transmotion. Through a thusly informed examination of the work of the Tlingit poet, Nora Marks Dauenhauer, this essay highlights sites of transmotional fidelity between Tlingit aesthetics and classic Japanese Zen poetry. Through the development of a succinct, yet complex syncretic aesthetic vision, Dauenhauer is able to create new...

Weber: The Contemporary West, 29:2 (2013): 148-150.

Arizona Quarterly 67:3 (2011): 151-172

Arizona Quarterly, 2014

John Hillcoat’s cinematic adaptation (2009) of Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road (2006) takes as i... more John Hillcoat’s cinematic adaptation (2009) of Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road (2006) takes as its subject the horror of a post-apocalyptic world in which all semblance of order has been reduced to an ephemeral absent presence that haunts the nameless protagonist and his young son. Ironically, their only means of survival and source of solace is a desolate road strewn with the wreckage of civilization. Central to the Hillcoat’s film is the multivalent use of this road as a simultaneous symbol of refuge and desolation. This article addresses the various ways in which notions of ecological catastrophe and bio-politics help to inform conceptions of landscape and placelessness in order to create a cinematic vision of a not-so-distant future in which the world is, perhaps, just as we have made it to be.

Wíčazo Ša Review 28:1 (2008): 51-72

Chapters by Billy J Stratton

The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction 1980–2020, 2022

Oxford History of Popular Print Culture, 2019

The Fictions of Stephen Graham Jones: A Critical Companion, University of New Mexico Press, 2016, 2016

University of Arizona Press, 2013

Transmotion, 2022

Los Angeles Review of Books, 2021

Los Angeles Review of Books, 2019

Transmotion, 2019

Los Angeles Review of Books, 2018

Transmotion, 2017

American Book Review, 38.1 (2016), 3.

co-author, Eleni Sikelianos, Denver Quarterly 49:1 (2014).

Weber: The Contemporary West, 29:2 (2013): 148-150.

Arizona Quarterly 67:3 (2011): 151-172

Arizona Quarterly, 2014

Wíčazo Ša Review 28:1 (2008): 51-72

The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction 1980–2020, 2022

Oxford History of Popular Print Culture, 2019

The Fictions of Stephen Graham Jones: A Critical Companion. Ed. Billy J. Stratton. University of... more The
Fictions of Stephen Graham Jones: A Critical Companion. Ed. Billy J. Stratton. University of New Mexico Press, 2016. 14-59.

The Fictions of Stephen Graham Jones: A Critical Companion. Ed. Billy J. Stratton. University of ... more The Fictions of Stephen Graham Jones: A Critical Companion. Ed. Billy J. Stratton. University of New Mexico Press, 2016. 82-110.

Native American Survivance, Memory, and Futurity: The Gerald Vizenor Continuum, 2016

Eds. Birgit Däwes and Alexandra Hauke, Routledge.

from, Twenty-First Century Perspectives on Indigenous Studies: Native North America in (Trans)Mot... more from, Twenty-First Century Perspectives on Indigenous Studies: Native North America in (Trans)Motion, [Chapter 4] Edited by Birgit Däwes, Karsten Fitz, Sabine N. Meyer

In Mediating Indianness, Ed. Cathy Covell Waegner, Michigan State UP, 2014.

In Native Games: Indigenous Peoples and Sports in the Post-Colonial World, Eds. Chris Hallinan an... more In Native Games: Indigenous Peoples and Sports in the Post-Colonial World, Eds. Chris Hallinan and Barry Judd, Emerald, 2013

Hollywood Progressive, 2022

Viewers continue to be drawn into what is now a once future world by Vangelis' (RIP) brooding and... more Viewers continue to be drawn into what is now a once future world by Vangelis' (RIP) brooding and swanky electronic score within a striking opening scene depicting a dark, ominous cityscape draped in smog and cut through with fiery bursts from smokestacks towering above even the highest of this future LA's high-rises. It's a scene that follows Dick's depiction of a dystopian future choked with the detritus of the physical world, which he termed "kipple" and set in a San Francisco cast in physical and spiritual darkness, rife with pollution in the wake of a nuclear war dubbed "World War Terminus." With the renewed possibility of the use of nuclear weapons made all the more real with Russia's latest offensive against Ukraine in February 2022, we are reminded that this is a threat humanity will always have to live with. The initial scene of Scott's film is preceded by an opening crawl of roll-up text establishing the speculative basis of his cinematic story world. His is one centered around strides in "Robot evolution," and the creation of a new model of super intelligent androids that are "virtually identical to a human-known as a Replicant." The near future of Scott's envisioning operates in a context in which human ingenuity and technological progress, represented by the Tyrell Corporation (Rosen Association in Dick's original) and led by a genius bioengineer who is so unlike the nouveau riche tech figureheads and click-bait hustlers of today.

Hollywood Progressive, 2022

J ohn Carpenter's adaptation of The Thing based on the novella by John W. Campbell (a deeply prob... more J ohn Carpenter's adaptation of The Thing based on the novella by John W. Campbell (a deeply problematic writer due to his racism and attraction to pseudoscience) titled Who Goes There? (1938) and premiered on June 25th, 1982-in an event hosted by the queen of scream, Elvira and on the same day as Blade Runner. The film broke new ground in the realm of sci-fi-horror while creating distance from its connection to the original source. Equipped with the magic of the movie make-up and special effects of Rob Bottin, Carpenter's adaptation brought a sense of realism, gore, and hideous alien monstrosity that stood in stark relief from the Campbell's novella, as well as Christian Nyby's previous 1951 adaptation, The Thing from Another World, both of which featured a three-eyed, humanoid alien. It was also a harsh departure from the endearing alien of Steven Spielberg's E.T., released just a few weeks prior. Although Carpenter's contrasting approach from these examples gave The Thing a much-increased sense of tension and grotesqueness, such features were initially seen as more of a detriment to the final cut as they were any indication of his directorial and creative talents. This was due in large part to the visceral effect his "disgusting" and "repellant" alien transformation scenes had on some critics and viewers, even prompting Roger Ebert to call it "the most nauseating thing I've ever seen on a movie screen." At the time of The Thing's release, it's useful to also note that although Carpenter had by that point directed Halloween, The Fog and Escape From New York (also with Kurt Russell), none had achieved the respect and accolades that would be bestowed, bringing him recognition as one of the most revered contemporary American filmmakers. An ascent that made the possessive form of his name, "John Carpenter's," synonymous with the best in modern sci-fi horror and making this accreditation within his film's titles a common feature.

Hollywood Progressive, 2022

In the final scenes of Luc Besson's The Fifth Element, when called upon to save the world from it... more In the final scenes of Luc Besson's The Fifth Element, when called upon to save the world from its imminent destruction by the force supernatural, transcendental chaos and evil, Leeloo, the incarnation of the titular Fifth Element-a human manifestation of the perfect being of divine life-poses the question: "What's the use in saving life when you see what you do with it?" She is prompted to ask this question after ruminating over a crash course on human history when nearing the end of an alphabetic tour of entries on an online encyclopedia (and no, it wasn't Wikipedia as that platform wasn't launched until 2001) upon encountering the entry for "War." In so doing, Leeloo, with a style provided by Jean Paul Gaultier that defined a generation, is faced with the enormity of the known litany of destructiveness, horrors, suffering and cruelty that we humans have inflicted on each other, ourselves, throughout recorded history. A wreckage, as Walter Benjamin famously called it, that has only grown larger in scale and lethality, just as the evil force depicted in the film, with each new advance in technology and the so-called march of human progress. Now, just twenty-five years after film's release on May 9 , 1997, it's a question that has grown only more pointed and ironic. That the film's ultimate hero and savior of humankind, Leeloo, is played by Ukrainianborn, Milla Jovovich, makes this question all the more relevant and urgent as the world continues to watch through the panoptical gaze of digital surveillance in all its forms and 24-hours news as the city of her birth, Kyiv (Kiev), as well as Bucha, Mariupol and other cities in Eastern Ukraine, are relentlessly and brutally attacked by invading Russian forces in a renewed military offensive that began on February 24, 2022. Speaking out again these acts of inhumanity, Jovovich stated, "I am heartbroken and dumbstruck trying to process the events of this week in my birthplace of Ukraine. My country and people being bombed. Friends and family in hiding. My blood and my roots come from both Russia and Ukraine. I am torn in two as I watch the horror unfolding, the country being destroyed, families being displaced, their whole life lying in charred fragments around them." To place all of our focus just upon these recent examples of the horrors of modern warfare would be to minimize the enormous suffering and loss of life due to a myriad of different forms of human violence that societies have been subjected to over the 25 years since Leeloo posed her question.

Hollywood Progressive, 2022

Paul Thomas Anderson claimed in a 2015 Rolling Stone interview to have first encountered the work... more Paul Thomas Anderson claimed in a 2015 Rolling Stone interview to have first encountered the work of Thomas Pynchon in high school-an impressive selection on any list of youthful literary explorations. The reading experience that Anderson shares would seem exceedingly uncommon now in an American educational system increasingly surveilled by political ideologues, uninformed school boards and fascistic academic watch groups that exert pressure and attempt to restrict access to a whole host of renowned writers and thinkers who may be seen as challenging conventional thinking. The climate of hostility to critical thinking and the celebration of unabashed anti-intellectualism, which continues to spread, perhaps, as another type of epidemic, is indicative of increasingly strenuous and belligerent efforts to inhibit intellectual freedom across the country. The chilling effects of these concerted and well-coordinated efforts, often cloaked behind a facade of faux-grassroots organization, to restrict access to literary, philosophical and scientific texts that challenge dominant histories, conventional ideas and religious orthodoxies have given rise to a social milieu that seems more and more like a parody of Mike Judge's 2006 film Idiocracy.