当代美国非主流文学思想调研

　　《当代美国非主流文学思想调研》从中国读者或研究者的立场出发，针对受访者的学术专长及其在美国文学、历史、文化上的贡献，精心设计问题，采用当面或书面访谈形式进行调研。调查内容涉及创造型作家研究，进而关注当代美国文学的现状；还涉及美国黑人研究，从而展示美国文化研究的新发展；此外还涉及跨界研究，从中传递出当代批评的多元性。这些难得的“现身说法”为受访者的生平与创作或研究留下了*权威的批注；在思想、观点、方法诸多方面为读者解读和研究美国文学提供了手材料，同时便于读者从采访人和受访人的对话中对学者本人及其作品有更深的理解，提升思想和文化的交流的直接现实感，试图使中美文学界建立有意义、有营养的对话和互动关系，为21世纪的中美文学文化交流做出应有的贡献。

Preface by Dana Wilde i
Preface by Jerry W. Ward， Jr. v
Chapter 1　A Critic’s Historical Mission
―An Interview with Professor Charles Altieri 1
Chapter 2　A Representative of the Best Black Studies
―An Interview with Professor Houston A. Baker， Jr. 6
Chapter 3　A Sketch of the Occupy Wall Street Movement Poet
―An Interview with Stephen Boyer 14
Chapter 4　A Historical Novelist Who Crosses the Borderline of History and Fiction
―An Interview with Geraldine Brooks 22
Chapter 5　A Writer’s Playwriting and His Other Working
―An Interview with Harold Ellis Clark 31
Chapter 6　A Woman Writer and Editor of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States
―An Interview with Professor Martha J. Cutter 38
Chapter 7　Never Too Old to Write
―An Interview with Professor Ann Deagon 44
Chapter 8　Writing Inside Out
―An Interview with Anne Fadiman 54
Chapter 9　“Living with the Dead” against Death
―An Interview with Fred Gardaphe 58
Chapter 10　A Black Writer’s Political Polemics
―An Interview with Professor Floyd W. Hayes 68
Chapter 11　A Haiku Poet with a History to Tell
―An Interview with Thomas Heffernan 79
Chapter 12　Literature as a Lens for Social Change
―An Interview with Dr. Sarah Hentges 89
Chapter 13　A Spokesperson for Native American Poetry
―An Interview with Joy Harjo 102
Chapter 14　Rethinking Human Health and Animal Rights
―An Interview with John Lawson 107
Chapter 15　A Critic of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture
―An Interview with Professor William E. Lenz 115
Chapter 16　Cultural Criticism and the Politics of African American Literature
―An Interview with Dr. Reginald Martin 123
Chapter 17　A Champion of the Humanist Legacy
―An Interview with R. Baxter Miller 131
Chapter 18　A Politically Committed Poet
―An Interview with E. Ethelbert Miller 140
Chapter 19　English Language Haiku Poet and Mentor
―An Interview with Lenard D. Moore 150
Chapter 20　A Silhouette of a Socially Committed Poet
―An Interview with Grace Ocasio 162
Chapter 21　A Smorgasbord of Different Savory Dishes on His Literary Table
―An Interview with David Radavich 167
Chapter 22　A Professor Mixes Media in the Message
―An Interview with Howard Rambsy II 176
Chapter 23　Woman Scholar Keen on Periodical Literature
―An Interview with Susan Harris Smith 184
Chapter 24　A Researcher of Food Identity and Culture
―An Interview with Professor Wenying Xu 196
Chapter 25　Black Cultural Defender and Cross-cultural Advocate
―An Interview with Professor Jerry W. Ward， Jr 205
Chapter 26　An Environment Guarder
―An Interview with Mary Whitney 216
Chapter 27　A Sketch of a Follower of Henry David Thoreau in Maine
―An Interview with Professor Dana Wilde 222
Bibliography 232
Epilogue 240

　　Chapter 1 A Critic’s Historical Mission―An Interview with Professor Charles Altieri
　　Abstract: Primarily interested in the varieties of Twentieth Century American Poetry， especially in relation to philosophy and to the visual arts， Charles Altieri’s Self and Sensibility in Contemporary American Poetry (1984) establishes a dominant mode in “serious” American poetry. He holds that Wittgenstein does not argue by philosophical abstraction but by finding examples and perspectives an audience can take on. In his view， moral theory is a matter of justification that an agent offers either of actions or of the values that govern specific choices； much criticism today is instrumental rather than concerned with the value of a particular text for what it does. Regarding the interdisciplinary relation， Professor Charles Altieri argues that one discipline does not explain the other but it motivates the other to richer inventions. As to the relation between postmodernism and modernism， he advocates that postmodernism in general accepts modernist hatreds of rhetoric and demands that art involve presentation rather than representation. Postmoder- nism in general rejects the idea that presentation is a form of mastery by the artist rather than an act of open vulnerability and making present of differences beyond the resources of society to handle. At the present time， the danger is that art will become as propagandistic as what it combats (or at least as unconcerned with the concrete) and lose the sense that art lives when it makes the concrete world seem a repository of new possible feelings and experiences； most poetry and social criticism misses the core of our social dilemmas: what seems most disturbing about American society is the freedom it gives that risks losing patriarchal authority in the family and in the state. 
　　Key Words: Professor Charles Altieri， Self and Sensibility in Contemporary American Poetry， moral theory， postmodernism and modernism
　　A Brief Introduction to Charles Altieri: Professor Charles Altieri is the Rachel Stageberg Anderson Chair in the Department of English at the University of California， Berkeley. Professor Altieri specializes in Twentieth Century American and British Literature and teaches graduate courses on Nineteenth Century Thought， Victorian Literature， Modern and Contemporary English and American Poetry， Modern and Classical Literary Theory， Literature and the Visual Arts， and seminars on specific poets， theoretical problems and interdisciplinary period studies.
　　Interview Time: May 30， 2013. Interview Place: the University of California， Berkeley， California.
　　Wang Zuyou: Self and Sensibility in Contemporary American Poetry (1984) establishes a dominant mode in “serious” American poetry， which is essentially scenic， presenting in brief dramatic settings subdued， carefully wrought emotions that build to a climactic tactile image. You view the mode not as a prescribed style but as a set of styles that share assumptions and that tend to seek the same narrow audience. Is this mode adequate for the self and sensibility in contemporary American poetry? What is the art of Contemporary American poetry? 
　　Charles Altieri: This is a very general question. My account of the scenic applied to most American poetry at the time， but there was also resistance that was evident in the poets of whom I wrote. I do not think it would be an adequate account now of the contemporary scene because there is a great deal more variety of voice and perspective. There is no one art of any period in the developed world.
　　Wang Zuyou: How does Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl blend the transcendental and the elemental? How does this bear upon Wallace Stevens and your essay “Stevens and the Crisis of European philosophy”?
　　Charles Altieri: Husserl treats the transcendental not as some alternate reality but as a mental state that extends beyond the individual subject， like a sense of valuing that is intended to hold for all people， or an abstracting of the self into the pure activity， as in an act of attention that becomes available for all. Stevens was desperate to find ways in which one subject could represent other people because of the abstract intimacy of the states of mind involved. His Rock provides good evidence for states of the subject that are open to all in their elemental nature. So the elemental becomes a shared intimacy， just as in Husserl.
　　Wang Zuyou: Do you have a special image of Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein in your mind? What did you mean when you wrote: “My Wittgenstein would even agree with Cavell that one fundamental challenge for Philosophy is to explore the degree to which it can ‘become literature and still know itself’” in “Cavell and Wittgenstein on Morality: The Limits of Acknowledgement”?
　　Charles Altieri: I meant that Wittgenstein does not argue by philosophical abstraction but by finding examples and perspectives an audience can take on. The mode of persuasion is close to what literature does