Subject Index

Updated October 2007

This index categorizes articles included in this section of the website, by their relevance to a variety of themes significant to Cooper readers and scholars. The categories are subjective, and limited by space -- only articles dealing very significantly with the subjects concerned are included. There are some multiple entries. The articles and papers are linked to their location in the chronological "shelves".

Users seeking to locate articles or paper by title should use the "find on this page" tool of their web browser. It was decided that an alphabetical list of article and paper titles would serve little purpose

Users may also seek relevant articles through the other finding aids at Articles & Papers.

Biography and Family

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• Axelrad, Allan M. (California State University at Fullerton), Epiphany at Ischia: The Effect of Italy on James Fenimore Cooper's Literary Landscape Painting. How Cooper fell in love with Italian scenery, learned to tell picturesque from sublime, and feared the wilderness. [1993 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Axelrad, Allan M. (California State University at Fullerton), Susan Fenimore Cooper, "The Lumley Autograph," and James Fenimore Cooper's Literary Legacy. The Cooper family deals with the 19th century autograph craze, in life and in SFC's story. [1999 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Ball, Hon. L. Chandler (Judge, Hoosick Falls, N.Y.), The Real "Natty" an Elder Brother. Claim (ca. 1870, oft-repeated, but unsubstantiated) that one Nathaniel Shipman of Hoosick Falls, N.Y., was the original for Cooper's Natty Bumppo. [1917 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Baym, Max I. (Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute) and Percy Matenko (Brooklyn College), The Odyssey of The Water-Witch and a Susan Fenimore Cooper Letter. An 1886 letter to recipient of a manuscript page gives background on writing and publication of The Water-Witch, noting inter alia that Americans in 1830 Dresden were expected to be black. [1970 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Beard, James F., Jr. (Dartmouth College), Cooper and his Artistic Contemporaries Close ties, personal and in vision, between Cooper and his artistic contemporaries, notably Cole, Dunlap, Greenough, and Morse. [1954 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Birdsall, Rev. Ralph (Rector, Christ Episcopal Church, Cooperstown), Fenimore Cooper in Cooperstown. Local anecdotes of Cooper and his personality from oral and written sources. [1917 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Bryant, William Cullen (Poet), Discourse on the Life, Character, and Genius of James Fenimore Cooper. In Memorial of James Fenimore Cooper (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1852), pp. 39-74. Extensive survey of Cooper's life and writings.
• 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]
• Butterfield, L[yman] H. (Princeton University), Judge William Cooper (1754-1809): A Sketch of His Character and Accomplishment. The first scholarly study of the life of James Fenimore Cooper's father. [1949 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Butterfield, Lyman H. (Institute of Early American History and Culture), Cooper's Inheritance: The Otsego Country and its Founders William Cooper and the early history of Otsego County. [1954 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Carso, Kerry Dean (Oneonta, New York), The Old Dwelling Transmogrified: James Fenimore Cooper's Otsego Hall. James Fenimore Cooper's remodelling of Otsego Hall, creating the second Gothic mansion in America. [2001 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Charvat, William (Ohio State University), Cooper as Professional Author. America's first wholly professional writer, his publishers (especially Carey), and his income. [1954 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Cooper, James Fenimore (grandson of author), William Cooper and Andrew Craig's Purchase of Croghan's Land. Rebuttal of Volwiler's 1923 allegations concerning William Cooper's 1786 acquisition of part of the "Croghan Patent". [1931 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Cooper, Susan Fenimore, Greenough's Chanting Cherubs. Letter to the Editor (1870) relating James Fenimore Cooper's commissioning of Horatio Greenough's sculpture The Chanting Cherubs. [SUSAN FENIMORE COOPER]
• Cooper, W[illiam] W[ager] (cousin of James Fenimore Cooper), Cooper Genealogy. Descendants of James Cooper (1661-1732), prepared in 1879; largely superseded but with extensive documentary references for earliest generations. [1917 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Crawford, James (Canajoharie Library and Art Gallery), James Fenimore Cooper and his Family in Samuel Finlay Morse's Painting: The Gallery of the Louvre. Analysis of the Morse painting, and significance of its inclusion of the Cooper family. [2003 COOPER SEMINAR]
• Davey, Michael J. (John Carroll University), Convention and the Limits of Biography for Literary Criticism: Fathers, Daughters, and Sentiment in Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. Readers should not assume that JFC's fictional characters are based on real people (such as Hannah Cooper in Pioneers or Susan Fenimore Cooper in Mohicans); rather, his use of "sentimentalism" in Mohicans is satiric and undercut by deliberate "Gothicism." [1999 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Denne, Constance Ayers (Baruch College, City University of New York), Cooper in Italy. Background, composition, and reception of Gleanings in Europe: Italy. [1980 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Dudley, William S. (Naval Historical Center), James Fenimore Cooper's Ned Myers: A Life Before the Mast. The American Neptune, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Fall 1997), pp. 323-329. Importance to maritime history of Cooper's biography of an ordinary sailor. [1997 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Dunn, James Taylor (Librarian, New York State Historical Association), Troskolaski and Cooper. When a Polish refugee landed on Cooper's doorstep in 1834, helping him proved not so easy. [1949 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Egan, Hugh (Ithaca College) Enabling and Disabling the Lake Erie Discussion: James Fenimore Cooper and Alexander Slidell Mackenzie Respond to the Perry/Elliott Controversy. The American Neptune, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Fall 1997), pp. 343-350. How the famous dispute over the Battle of Lake Erie began as a discussion of facts, and ended up as an increasingly nebulous argument about words. [1997 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Ellsworth, Waldo (First National Bank of Cooperstown), Cooperstown's First Bank. History of the Otsego County Bank, 1830-1866, one of whose principal depositors (and check writers) was James Fenimore Cooper. [1941 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Evans, Constantine (Syracuse University), James Fenimore Cooper: Young Man to Author. Syracuse University Library Associates Courier, Vol. XXIII, No. 1 (Spring 1988), pp. 57-77. The personal challenges leading to Cooper's transformation from gentleman farmer to author. [1988 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Evans, Constantine (Syracuse University), An Unpublished Reminiscence of James Fenimore Cooper. Syracuse University Library Associates Courier, Vol. XXIV, No. 2 (Fall 1989), pp. 45-53. Transcription and commentary on a short manuscript by Chemistry Professor William Mather (1802-1890), recounting his impressions of Cooper during a visit to Cooperstown in 1844. [1989 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Evans, Constantine (Syracuse University), Fenimore Cooper's Libel Suits. Syracuse University Library Associates Courier, Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Fall 1992), pp. 47-74. Analysis of Cooper's libel suits against William Holt Averell and James Watson Webb. [1992 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Francis, Dr. John W. (Cooper's friend and physician), Reminiscences of Cooper. In Memorial of James Fenimore Cooper (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1852), pp. 94-103. An account of Cooper's death, and memories of the Bread and Cheese Club, and Cooper's interest in theatre and music.
• Franklin, Wayne (Northeastern University), The Last of the Coopers. Significance of James Cooper's 1826 legal change of his name to James Fenimore Cooper. [1995 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Franklin, Wayne (Northeastern University), Introduction: Becoming James Fenimore Cooper. The American Neptune, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Fall 1997), pp. 299-314. Overview of the biographic study of Cooper; biographic, psychological and literary aspects of Cooper's 1826 assumption of "Fenimore" as a middle name. [1997 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Franklin, Wayne (Northeastern University), Cooper as Passenger. The American Neptune, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Fall 1997), pp. 351-357. How Cooper's favored status as a Captain's protegé on the Stirling in 1806-07 affected his attitudes towards the sea both in his life and in novels such as Homeward Bound. (1838). [1997 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Grossman, James (Lawyer and biographer), Cooper and the Responsibility of the Press. American freedom threatened by public opinion and an unscrupulous press; Cooper's libel suits, Home as Found, and The American Democrat. [1954 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Harthorn, Steven P. (University of Tennessee, Knoxville), James Fenimore Cooper and The Crater. Cooper fascination with practical farming, exemplified in his letter on potato blight to The Cultivator, is clearly reflected in "The Crater." [2001 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Harthorn, Steven P. (University of Tennessee, Knoxville), Cooper's Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief as a Defense of Authoriship. This work marks a change in Cooper's authorial style to the first person, and despite the unusual narrator may in some respects be considered as symbolically autobiographical in fact. [2003 COOPER SEMINAR]
• Harthorn, Steven (University of Tennessee), What Happened to Cooper’s Sixth Leatherstocking Tale?. Did Cooper ever plan a Natty Bumppo novel set during the American Revolution? [2005 COOPER SEMINAR]
• MacDougall, Hugh C. (James Fenimore Cooper Society), Cooperstown's Cooper. How Cooperstown influenced Cooper, and was reflected in his works. [1989 SUNY SEMINAR]
• MacDougall, Hugh C. (James Fenimore Cooper Society), Eclipse and Rebirth: The Four Incarnations of James Fenimore Cooper. Solar eclipses -- real and imagined -- illustrate how Cooper "remade" himself in moments of personal crisis, adopting a new outward persona. [1997 SUNY SEMINAR]
• MacDougall, Hugh C. (James Fenimore Cooper Society), Making a Place Historic: The Coopers and Cooperstown. How three generations of Coopers gave their differing visions of Cooperstown to the world. (1998) [INFORMAL TALKS]
• MacDougall, Hugh C. (James Fenimore Cooper Society), James Fenimore Cooper and the Sea. Cooper as novelist of the sea, naval historian, and friend of the United States Navy. (1997) [INFORMAL TALKS]
• MacDougall, Hugh C. (James Fenimore Cooper Society), The Book that Made Glens Falls Famous: An Introduction to James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. Born in the Cave at Glens Falls in 1824, Mohicans considers seriously the role of the wilderness in creating the American character, the American Indian, and the African-American. (2000) [INFORMAL TALKS]
• Madison, Robert D. (Northwestern University), with Mary K. Madison (Northeastern University), Guides in the Wilderness: An Extract, Glossary, and Chart of Cooper's Fictional and Factual Boat Journeys on Lake Ontario.. Cruise of the Scud in The Pathfinder compared, in a chart, with the route taken by Cooper from Oswego to Niagara in 1809, as recorded in his biography of fellow-officer Melancthon Woolsey. With a glossary of marine terms used in The Pathfinder by Mary K. Madison. [1982 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Madison, Robert D. (US 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]
• Madison, Robert D. (United States Naval Academy), Cooper and the Sea: A Bibliographical Note. The American Neptune, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Fall 1997), pp. 371-372. Survey of Cooper's sea fiction and non-fiction, and of critical commentary about it. [1997 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Memorial of James Fenimore Cooper (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1852). Record of memorial meetings held in New York after Cooper's death, with a major address by William Cullen Bryant, a retrospective account of Cooper and of his death his friend and physician Dr. John W. Francis, and speeches and letters from a wide circle of literary, scholarly, and civic notables, many discussing their relationship with Cooper. [BIOGRAPHIC/Memorial].
• Peck, H. Daniel (University of California at Santa Barbara), Place into Space: from The Pioneers to The Deerslayer. Otsego Lake as the center of Cooper's imagination. [1979 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Peprnik, Michal (Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic), Moravian Origins of J. F. Cooper's Indians. Cooper's Indians are based on the works of Moravian Missionary John Heckewelder. [2006 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Philbrick, Thomas L. (University of Pittsburgh), Cooper Country in Fiction. Significance of place in Cooper's fiction, especially in the four "Otsego novels." [1978 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Pickering, James H. (Michigan State University), New York in the Revolution: Cooper's Wyandotté. Cooper's local historical sources for the novel, depicting the Revolution in central New York as a civil war. [1968 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Pickering, James H. (Michigan State University), Fenimore Cooper in Our Time. James F. Beard's new Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper is an exemplary compilation casting important new light on Cooper's life, character, and thought. [1970 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Pickering, James A. (Michigan State University), Cooper's Otsego Heritage: The Sources of The Pioneers. Sources in Cooperstown local history. [1979 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Pickering, James H. (University of Houston), Fenimore Cooper as Country Gentleman: A New Glimpse of Cooper's Westchester Years. Contrary to his public image as a happy gentlman, Cooper was undergoing desperate financial difficulties resulting in a serious breach with his wife's family. [1991 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Philbrick, Thomas L. (University of Pittsburgh), Cooper in Europe: The Travel Books. Background to the five travel books. [1980 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Schachterle, Lance (Worcester Polytechnic Institute), Cooper's Attitude toward England. Cooper's complex reactions, reflected in Notions of the Americans, Gleanings in Europe: England, and, much more ambiguously, in his fiction. [1982 SUNY SEMINAR]
• 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]
• Taylor, Alan (Boston University), Who Murdered William Cooper? The family tradition of William Cooper's murder, accepted by generations of biographers and critics, is without foundation; William Cooper died a peaceful and natural death. [1991 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Taylor, Alan (University of California at Davis), Who was Elizabeth Cooper? What the sparse materials reveal of James Fenimore Cooper's apparently often unhappy and reclusive mother. [1994 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Thorp, Willard (Princeton University), Cooper Beyond America. European enthusiasm for Cooper's novels. [1954 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Viñuela Angulo, Urbano (Universidad de Oviedo, Spain), La Polémica de James Fenimore Cooper con la prensa norteamericana a principios del siglo XIX. Cooper's controversies with the Whig Press. [1982 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Volwiler, A[lbert] T. (Ph.D.), George Croghan and the Development of Central New York, 1763-1800. The efforts of George Croghan, Indian agent and land speculator, to establish a settlement centered on Lake Otsego, and of William Cooper's eventual acquisition of much of the "Croghan Patent". [1923 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Walker, Jeffrey (Oklahoma State University), The Importance of Flotsam and Jetsam in Editing the Unpublished Letters of James Fenimore Cooper. Problems of locating; Cooper's handwriting, spelling, and punctuation; survey of newly found letters. [1993 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Wallace, James D. (Boston College), Race and Spiritualism in Satanstoe. A partially cancelled authorial footnote about an African-American psychic medium in Cooperstown illustrates the cultural tensions surrounding the representation of race in the novel. [1993 SUNY SEMINAR]
• 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]
• Whitehill, Walter Muir (Boston Athenaeum), Cooper as a Naval Historian. Importance of Cooper's Naval History. [1954 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Wickes, W.K. (Principal, Syracuse High School), Prefatory Notes to The Last of the Mohicans. Critical preface to The Last of the Mohicans, New York: MacMillan, 1899. [1899 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Wright, Nathalia (University of Tennessee), The Chanting Cherubs: Horatio Greenough's Marble Group for James Fenimore Cooper. Genesis, reception, significance, and disappearance of statue commissioned by Cooper. [1957 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]

Cooper as a Literary Artist

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• Alicino, Nicholas J. (SUNY-Oneonta), Character Development in Natty Bumppo. Paper originally given in George Test's Cooper Course at SUNY-Oneonta, in January 1979. Viewing the Leatherstocking Novels in their biographically-chronological order, rather than in the order written, nevertheless presents a coherent and persuasive portrait of Natty Bumppo's developing character. [1979 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Ashley, Leonard R.N. (Brooklyn College, City University of New York), The Onomastics of Cooper's Verbal Art in The Deerslayer and Elsewhere. Conscious artistry in Cooper's use of names compensates for his other literary faults. [1980 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Axelrad, Allan M. (California State University at Fullerton), Epiphany at Ischia: The Effect of Italy on James Fenimore Cooper's Literary Landscape Painting. How Cooper fell in love with Italian scenery, learned to tell picturesque from sublime, and feared the wilderness. [1993 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Baveystock, Freddy (Oxford University), Probable Fictions and Improbable Truths: The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish, Notions of the Americans and Cooper's Quarrel with History. Cooper's views of the relationship between fiction and history, and of the nature of truth. [1993 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Beard, James F., Jr. (Dartmouth College), Cooper and his Artistic Contemporaries Close ties, personal and in vision, between Cooper and his artistic contemporaries, notably Cole, Dunlap, Greenough, and Morse. [1954 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Buchenau, Barbara (University of Goettingen, German), 'Wizards of the West'? How Americans respond to Sir Walter Scott, the 'Wizard of the North'. How Cooper diverged from Scott and European writers, and Child (Hobomok) and Sedgwick (Hope Leslie) carried the divergence further. [1997 SUNY SEMINAR]
• 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]
• Callahan, David (Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal), Who Hides in the Work of James Fenimore Cooper?. The significance of physical concealment in Cooper's works, especially as exemplified in The Spy and The Pathfinder. [2001 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Callahan, David (University of Aveiro, Portugal), Containing Manhood in James Fenimore Cooper's The Deerslayer. For all its outdoor adventure, The Deerslayer is in many respects a novel raising issues of interior spaces and of femininity. [2005 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Clarke, Colin A. (George Washington University), Like a Mirror Reflecting Itself: Natty Bumppo, The Virginian, and the Fate of the American Frontier. The Last of the Mohicans prefigures the American "Western novel," but its multiplicity of voices (heteroglossia) distinguishes it from Owen Wister's classic "Western." [1997 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Clavel, Marcel (Faculté des Lettres d'Aix-en-Provence), What Fenimore Cooper Has Meant and What He Still Means To Me. "A propos du centenaire de la mort de FENIMORE COOPER et du Congrès de Cooperstown de Septembre 1951: A French Tribute to James Fenimore Cooper" in Annales de la Faculé des Lettres d'Aix-en-Provence, 1956, pp. 2-8. French Cooper scholar Marcel Clavel (1894-1976) describes his life-long fascination with Cooper. [1956 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Clavel, Marcel (Faculté des Lettres d'Aix-en-Provence), Cooper's Reputation One Century After His Death. "A propos du centenaire de la mort de FENIMORE COOPER et du Congrès de Cooperstown de Septembre 1951: A French Tribute to James Fenimore Cooper" in Annales de la Faculé des Lettres d'Aix-en-Provence, 1956, pp. 9-10. French Cooper scholar Marcel Clavel (1894-1976) pleads for a renewal of scholarly interest in Cooper. [1956 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Daly, Robert (SUNY Buffalo), From Paradox and Aporia to Cultural Hybridization and Complex Adaptive Systems: New Theories and the Uses of Cooper at the Present Time. Contemporary literary theory continues to reveal new meanings in and deepen our understanding of Cooper's works. [1995 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Davey, Michael J. (John Carroll University), Convention and the Limits of Biography for Literary Criticism: Fathers, Daughters, and Sentiment in Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. Readers should not assume that JFC's fictional characters are based on real people (such as Hannah Cooper in Pioneers or Susan Fenimore Cooper in Mohicans); rather, his use of "sentimentalism" in Mohicans is satiric and undercut by deliberate "Gothicism." [1999 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Denne, Constance Ayers (Baruch College, City University of New York), Cooper's Use of Setting in the European Trilogy. Settings in The Bravo, The Heidenmauer, and The Headsman as artistic keys to Cooper's meaning. [1980 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Egan, Hugh (Ithaca College) Cooper's Career in the First Person. Cooper's "first person" writings, beginning with the biographical Ned Myers and continuting through The Redskins, in which—contrary to accepted wisdom—Hugh Littlepage's rantings may not reflect the author's views on the rent controversy. [2001 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Fanuzzi, Robert (St. Johns University), Empire of Tears. Cooper (and Catharine Maria Sedgwick) used a feminized historical novel to transform the Indian captivity tale into the sentimental novel. [1993 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Fiedler, Leslie A. (SUNY Buffalo), James Fenimore Cooper: The Problem of the Good Bad Writer. Cooper's "schlock" reveals American culture's racist, sexist, imperialist, and genocidal underside. [1979 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Goldbæk, Henning (University of Copenhagen, Denmark), Cooper and the Forest Gentleman. The Last of the Mohicans as a Bildungsroman (novel of apprenticeship) -- a novel of the creation of man, with nature as an image of the historical mind. [1999 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Hall, Cynthia (University of California, Riverside), The Frontier Dilemma of "Girls Gone Wild": Mabel Dunham's Nineteenth-Century Wilderness Education and Sadistic Interpellation. The Pathfinder describes Mabel Dunham as a weak, passive, female demanding protection; the narrative shows her to be anything but. Nevertheless, there is no place for her on a masculine frontier. [2003 COOPER SEMINAR]
• 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]
• Harthorn, Steven (University of Tennessee), What Happened to Cooper’s Sixth Leatherstocking Tale?. Did Cooper ever plan a Natty Bumppo novel set during the American Revolution? [2005 COOPER SEMINAR]
• House, Kay S. (San Francisco State University), Cooper's Adaptations of Romance Conventions and Structures. Cooper understood and used, but also adapted, the long-standing traditions of the Romance. [1982 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Kowalewski, Michael (Rutgers University), Fictions of Violence in The Deerslayer. Cooper's use of language, as word music in the tradition of the romance, should not be judged in terms of literary realism. [1984 SUNY SEMINAR]
• 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]
• MacDougall, Hugh (James Fenimore Cooper Society), Peeling the Onion: Looking for Layers of Meaning in The Deerslayer. Nine layers of meaning, from juvenile to profound, in The Deerslayer. [2003 COOPER SEMINAR]
• Madison, Robert D. (United States Naval Academy), Cooper's Columbus. Irving had already written a definitive narrative of Columbus' voyage; in Mercedes of Castile, Cooper tried and failed to tell the story in dialogue. [1984 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Madison, Robert D. (United States Naval Academy), Cooper and the Sea: A Bibliographical Note. The American Neptune, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Fall 1997), pp. 371-372. Survey of Cooper's sea fiction and non-fiction, and of critical commentary about it. [1997 OTHER ARTICLES]
• McWilliams, John (Middlebury College), Revolution and the Historical Novel : Cooper's Transforming of European Tradition. The Spy and Lionel Lincoln reject the wavering European hero of Scott, Balzac, and Pushkin, but accept the notion of innate character. [1991 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Morton, Richard (McMaster University), The Double Chronology of Leatherstocking. Reading the Leatherstocking Tales in order of their publication, or in the order of Natty Bumppo's fictional life, provides different insights; both are valid. [1989 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Morton, Richard (McMaster University), The Deerslayer: Appearance, Reality and Expectation.. Chapter from an uncompleted book. Few things in the novel are what they at first seem, but in introducing Natty Bumppo as one who "is vitally aware of the often confusing interplay between appearances and realities," Cooper provides an "admirable preparation" for the Natty of the other Leatherstocking Tales. [1990 OTHER ARTICLES]
• 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]
• 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]
• Person, Leland S., Jr. (Indiana University-Purdue University at Fort Wayne) The Leatherstocking Tradition in American Fiction: or, The Sources of Tom Sawyer: A Descriptive Essay. The source of Tom Sawyer, in characters, theme, and many plot details is -- Cooper's The Pioneers ! [1986 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Philbrick, Thomas (University of Pittsburgh, emeritus), Cooper and the Literary Discovery of the Sea. Cooper's eleven sea novels created the genre, and, more generally, that of environment interacting with fictional characters. [1989 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Rans, Geoffrey (University of Western Ontario), Ordering Leather-Stocking. Reading the Leather-Stocking Tales in the order of publication (rather than that of Natty Bumppo's life) enhances the reader's understanding of Cooper's complex meanings. [1993 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Redekop, Ernest H. (University of Western Ontario), Cooper's Emblems of History. Using landscape to portray history in The Last of the Mohicans, Satanstoe, The Heidenmauer, and The Crater (in the last, Thomas Cole's The Course of Empire). [1989 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Ringe, Donald A. (University of Kentucky), Cooper's Mode of Expression. Cooper's complex descriptive genius, exemplified in Lionel Lincoln, Wyandotté and especially The Pioneers. [1978 SUNY SEMINAR].
• Ringe, Donald A. (University of Kentucky), The Last of the Mohicans as a Gothic Novel. Cooper's Americanization of the Gothic Mode in the novel and elsewhere. [1986 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Ringe, Donald A. (University of Kentucky), The Bravo : Social Criticism in the Gothic Mode. Brilliant use of Gothic literary style to depict a Republic reduced to totalitarian terror by commercial greed; 18th century Venice in history; America (??) in the future. [1991 SUNY SEMINAR]
• 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]
• Schachterle, Lance and Kent Ljungquist (Worcester Polytechnic Institute), Fenimore Cooper's Literary Defenses: Twain and the Text of The Deerslayer. Joel Myerson, ed., Studies in the American Renaissance 1988, pp. 401-417. Point-by-point exposé of deliberate fabrications in Mark Twain's notorious "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" (1895) [1988 OTHER ARTICLES]
• 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]
• Schachterle, Lance (Worcester Polytechnic Institute), Cooper's Revisions for His First Major Novel, The Spy (1821-31). Analysis, with illustrations, of extensive revisions made to The Spy in 1831. [1999 SUNY SEMINAR]
• 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]
• 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]
• Smith, Gail K. (Marquette University), Relics and Repetition in The Deerslayer. Cooper's characters, and the reader, are constantly asked to draw uncertain conclusions from fragmentary evidence (relics), in constant patterns of repetition. [1993 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Starobin, Christina (New York University), The Monikins. Radical ideas about property, cushioned by the use of animals (from the Hindu "Ramayana"??) in Cooper's "beast fable," compared with The American Democrat and the Leatherstocking Tales' Natty Bumppo. [1991 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Starobin, Christina (Culinary Institute of America), Cooper's Theory of Relativity: Time Travel in the Leatherstocking Tales. Musings on how Cooper asks us to look at time. [2003 COOPER SEMINAR]
• Suzuki, Taisuke (Asahi University, Japan), The Background to Cooper's Literary Works. Musings on D. H. Lawrence's writings about Cooper. [2003 COOPER SEMINAR]
• Walker, Warren S., Plots and Characters in the Fiction of James Fenimore Cooper. Archon Books/Dawson, 1978. (xi, 346 p.) © 1978, Warren S. Walker, and placed on-line with his permission. Detailed analysis of the plots of each of Cooper's novels and short stories. [WRITINGS]
• Walters, Patrick (University of Delaware), Domesticating Wilderness in The Last of the Mohicans. The dangerous animals of real wilderness are replaced by dangerous Indians, or tamed by comic treatment. [2005 COOPER SEMINAR]
• Wegener, Signe O. (The University of Georgia), Rewriting the Courtship Novel: James Fenimore Cooper's The Deerslayer. A romance in which the girl doesn't get the boy. [2003 COOPER SEMINAR]
• Wickes, W.K. (Principal, Syracuse High School), Prefatory Notes to The Last of the Mohicans. Critical preface to The Last of the Mohicans, New York: MacMillan, 1899. [1899 OTHER ARTICLES]

Economic Views

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• Bagby, George F. (Hampden-Sydney College), The Temptations of Pathfinder : Cooper's Radical Critique of Ownership. Cooper's views on property in The Pathfinder at odds with the conservative ideas expressed in the Littlepage novels. [1991 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Bender, Thomas (University of California, Davis), James Fenimore Cooper and the City. Abandoning his reliance on the rural gentleman as the backbone of society, Cooper, contrary to accepted interpretations, began by mid-century to look to the new urban commercial elite. [1970 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• 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]
• Ellis, David Maldwyn (Hamilton College), The Coopers and the New York State Landholding Systems. Cooper, property, and the "anti-rent wars"; the Littlepage novels (Satanstoe, The Chainbearer, and The Redskins). [1954 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Philbrick, Thomas (University of Pittsburgh, emeritus), Fact and Fiction: Uses of Maritime History in Cooper's Afloat and Ashore. The American Neptune, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Fall 1997), pp. 315-321. Unlike the earlier romantic sea stories, this novel is autobiographical, realistic, and very much about property. [1997 OTHER ARTICLES]
• 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]
• Starobin, Christina (New York University), The Monikins. Radical ideas about property, cushioned by the use of animals (from the Hindu "Ramayana"??) in Cooper's "beast fable," compared with The American Democrat and the Leatherstocking Tales' Natty Bumppo. [1991 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Walker, Warren S. (Texas Tech University), Cooper's Yorkers and Yankees in the Jeffersonian Garden. A Jeffersonian agrarian democrat confronts the commercial Yankee invasion of New York. [1980 SUNY SEMINAR]

Environment, Nature, and Conservation

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• Dyer, Klay (Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada), Turning Over a New Leaf: The Literary Ecologies of Susan Fenimore Cooper and Catharine Parr Traill. A Canadian and and an American naturalist/writer, working separately, created a new literary genre. [2001 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Johnson, Rochelle (Albertson College of Idaho), James Fenimore Cooper, Susan Fenimore Cooper, and the Work of History. SFC's uses of history and natural history both differ from those of her father, and revise the dominant myths of 19th century America. [1999 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Johnston, Paul K. (State University of New York at Plattsburgh), A Puritan in the Wilderness: Natty Bumppo's Language & American Nature Today. The Pioneers secularized the Puritan idea of Biblical "wilderness", and bequeathed it to modern environmentalism. [1997 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Johnston, Paul (State University of New York at Plattsburgh), No Name for Sweet William: Rural Intimacy and Rural Estrangement in Susan Cooper and James Fenimore Cooper. For James and other Americans, Nature is to be conquered, or to be valued as a refuge; for Susan and many Europeans, Nature is an intimate part of normal human life; her discussion of flower names in Rural Hours points up this important difference. [2001 SUNY SEMINAR]
• MacDougall, Hugh C. (James Fenimore Cooper Society), James Fenimore Cooper: Prophet of the Environmental Movement. Cooper, many decades ahead of his time, proclaimed the major principles of modern environmentalism. (1990) [INFORMAL TALKS]
• MacDougall, Hugh C. (James Fenimore Cooper Society), "Their Waste Has Done It All": The Prairie as a Post-Apocalyptic Novel. Natty Bumppo's vision of the prairies as a man-created desert in which human ruins have turned to dust, just as geological science was making such a chronology conceivable, casts new ecological light on this novel. [2001 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Pikus, Michael J., (Niagara County Community College), Chopping Away at the New World: The Metaphor of the Axe in The Prairie. The axe as a symbol of destruction, in The Pioneers and The Prairie. [2001 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Taylor, Alan (University of California at Davis), The Great Change Begins: Settling the Forest of Central New York The real lives of the first settlers of Otsego County (prototypes of Cooper's The Pioneers); economic, social, and environmental. [1995 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Van Valen, Nelson (Beloit College), James Fenimore Cooper and the Conservation Schism. In The Pioneers Cooper launched both the utilitarian (Judge Temple) and preservationist (Natty Bumppo) wings of the conservation movement. [1981 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• 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]

Film, Drama, and Opera

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• Kelly, Thomas O., II (Siena College), Whites and Indians and White Indians: The Last of the Mohicans from James Fenimore Cooper to Daniel Day Lewis. Despite its proclaimed "sensitivity," the 1992 film, like its predecessors and the novel, and reflecting American values, remains ambivalent about Native Americans. [1997 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Starobin, Christina (Culinary Institute of America), Falsification of the Past: Cooper’s Legacy Reexamined and Reclaimed. Musings on Cooper, from Leatherstocking Tales death scenes to today's film and television. [2005 cooper seminar]
• Walker, Jeffrey (Oklahoma State University), Deconstructing an American Myth: Hollywood and The Last of the Mohicans. The films have "rewritten Cooper's plot, miscast and mislabeled his characters, modernized his dialogue, misunderstood his themes, and misrepresented history." [1995 SUNY SEMINAR]

Gender Issues and Women

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• Bower, Anne L. (Ohio State University, Marion), Resisting Women: Feminist Students and Cooper's The Pioneers, with a Few Thoughts Concerning Pedagogical Approaches to The Prairie. Getting students to "listen" to Cooper, and then to appreciate him. [2001 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Callahan, David (University of Aveiro, Portugal), Containing Manhood in James Fenimore Cooper's The Deerslayer. For all its outdoor adventure, The Deerslayer is in many respects a novel raising issues of interior spaces and of femininity. [2005 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Flynn, Rebecca (University of Houston), Gendered Space and Judith Hunter in James Fenimore Cooper's The Deerslayer. Complexities of gender roles on the frontier. [2001 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Harding, J. Gregory (Northeastern University), "Without distinction of sex, rank, or color" : Cora Munro as Cooper's Ideal and the Moral Center in The Last of the Mohicans. Cora Munro, though a woman, not quite genteel, and of partly African ancestry, occupies the center between "savagery" and "civility," and represents Cooper's ideal for a virtuous American. [1999 SUNY SEMINAR]
• House, Kay Seymour (San Francisco State University), Cooper's Females. Cooper reflects American literary conventions of his time, but sometimes pushes their limits. [1978 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Owen, William (Ryerson Polytechnic University, Toronto), From Resistance to Autonomy: Daughter-Father Relationships in The Last of the Mohicans and The Pathfinder. Contest between the cultural values of the (military) fathers and the emerging values of the daughters. [1999 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Shillinglaw, Susan (San Jose State University), Cooper's Fathers and Daughters: The Dialectic of Paternity. Cooper's brave patriarchs nurture dutiful but independent and sensitive daughters. [1986 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Shillinglaw, Susan (San Jose State University), Pictorial Space as Identity in The Deerslayer. In seeking their identities, Deerslayer moves successfully outward towards a world of action; Judith unsuccessfully inward towards a world of self-understanding. [1986 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Wallace, James D. (Boston College), "The Paradise of Women": The Domestic Sphere in Notions of the Americans. Contradictory notions of separate spheres (for women, Indians, etc.) pervade both Notions and Cooper's other writings. [1986 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Wegener, Signe (University of Georgia), The Perils of Parenting: Parental Manipulation in The Leatherstocking Tales. That Cooper's fathers assert a dominant family role, but at the same time endanger and manipulate their daughters, is an implicit critique of 19th century fatherhood. [1999 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Werlock, Abby H.P. (Hamilton College), Courageous Young Women in Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales; Heroines and Victims. Cooper's Leatherstocking heroines (Elizabeth Temple, Cora Munro, Ellen Wade, Mabel Dunham, Judith Hutter) are spirited, independent, and courageous.
• Zeitvogel, Chuck (State University of New York College at Brockport), Gender Power and Social Class: The Role of Women in James Fenimore Cooper's The Pathfinder, Homeward Bound, Home as Found and The Ways of the Hour. In these works, "Female characters are only allowed to wield power in small, enclosed spaces, or in life or death situations.... Male characters...control all social space and political power." Master of Arts Thesis, Brockport, November 2004. [2004 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Zhang, Aiping (California State University at Chico), The Negotiation of Masculinities: James Fenimore Cooper's Ideology of Manhood in The Last of the Mohicans. By exploring different kinds of men, white and Indian, Cooper helps refine and define American notions of masculinity and identity. [1999 SUNY SEMINAR]

Views on History and Historical Theory; Cooper as an Historian

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• Adams, Charles H. (University of Virginia), "The Guardian of the Law"; George Washington's Role in The Spy. Conflict in Cooper between law and higher principle, especially as seen in The Spy. [1984 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Axelrad, Allan M. (University of Pennsylvania), History and Utopia: A Study of the World View of James Fenimore Cooper. Norwood, PA: Norwood Editions, 1978. (x, 231 p.) © 1978 by Allan M. Axelrad, and placed on-line with his permission. A major and provocative study of Cooper's intellectual and religious views, as reflected in a detailed study of his novels and other writings. [WRITINGS]
• Baveystock, Freddy (Oxford University), Probable Fictions and Improbable Truths: The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish, Notions of the Americans and Cooper's Quarrel with History. Cooper's views of the relationship between fiction and history, and of the nature of truth. [1993 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Bevilacqua, Winifred Farrant (Universita Degli Studi di Torino), Fictional Design and Historical Vision in The Last of the Mohicans. Cooper draws on literary tradition and ends with the victory of "civilization," but also repeatedly undermines this triumphalism by suggesting other options and lost opportunities. [1989 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Birns, Nicholas New School University), The Unknown War: The Last of the Mohicans and the Effacement of the Seven Years War in American Historical Myth. Why Cooper did not make the Iroquois the heroes of this novel. [2005 COOPER SEMINAR]
• Buchholz, Douglas (University of Pennsylvania), Landownership and Representations of Social Conflict in The Pioneers. A Marxist reading of the novel, with Cooper as a proto-Marxist "socio-historical realist" employing "supreme...socio-ideological acuity." [1989 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Fanuzzi, Robert (St. Johns University), Empire of Tears. Cooper (and Catharine Maria Sedgwick) used a feminized historical novel to transform the Indian captivity tale into the sentimental novel. [1993 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Goldbæk, Henning (University of Copenhagen, Denmark), History and Mythology in The Prairie. Law of nature vs. law of civilization, and the Trapper's (Natty's) dream of reconciling them. [2001 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Hancuff, Richard (George Washington University), Without a Cross: Writing the Nation in The Last of the Mohicans. Racial/ethnic/national control over diversity in the novel echoes the creation of the American nation. [1997 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Goetzmann, William H. (University of Texas), James Fenimore Cooper : The Prairie. Hennig Cohen, ed., Landmarks of American Writing, New York: Basic Books, 1969, pp. 75-87. Analysis of novel, examining Cooper's sources and arguing that the heart of the novel is the redemption of Ishmael Bush. [1969 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Hales, John (California State University at Fresno), American Millenialism and The Crater. Despite comparisons with Thomas Cole's The Course of Empire, Cooper's The Crater is theologically and historically optimistic. [1989 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Hecht, Roger (SUNY Oneonta): “Worse than trash”? Politics, Poetry, and the Anti-Rent Press. The popular press background to The Redskins [2005 COOPER SEMINAR]
• House, Kay S. (San Francisco State University), Cooper as Historian. The Pilot understood John Paul Jones better than Samuel Morison; The Last of the Mohicans depicts the Iroquois better than Colden, Parkman or Morgan. [1986 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Johnson, Rochelle (Albertson College of Idaho), James Fenimore Cooper, Susan Fenimore Cooper, and the Work of History. SFC's uses of history and natural history both differ from those of her father, and revise the dominant myths of 19th century America. [1999 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Kelly, William P. (Queens College, City University of New York), History, Language, and The Leatherstocking Tales. Historiography of later Tales contrasted with that of earler ones, and with Scott's Waverley novels. [1979 SUNY SEMINAR]
• MacDougall, Hugh C. (James Fenimore Cooper Society), The Book that Made Glens Falls Famous: An Introduction to James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. Born in the Cave at Glens Falls in 1824, Mohicans considers seriously the role of the wilderness in creating the American character, the American Indian, and the African-American. (2000) [INFORMAL TALKS]
• MacDougall, Hugh C. (James Fenimore Cooper Society), "Their Waste Has Done It All": The Prairie as a Post-Apocalyptic Novel. Natty Bumppo's vision of the prairies as a man-created desert in which human ruins have turned to dust, just as geological science was making such a chronology conceivable, casts new ecological light on this novel. [2001 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Magee, Richard M. (Fordham University), Landscape of Loss, Landscape of Promise. Thomas Cole, history, and the Coopers: JFC's landscapes (The Last of the Mohicans) look back with sorrow; SFC's (Rural Hours) look forward with hope. [1999 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Mann, Barbara A. (University of Toledo), Whipped Like a Dog: Crossed Blood in The Last of the Mohicans. Cooper's treatment of Cora Munro and Natty Bumppo reveals a deep understanding of the problems of mixed race -- African-American and Native American -- in colonial America. [1995 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Marshall, Ian (Pennsylvania State University, Altoona), Cooper's "Course of Empire": Mountains and the Rise and Fall of American Civilization in The Last of the Mohicans, The Spy, and The Pioneers. In The Crater Cooper borrowed Thomas Cole's mountain image to symbolize God; in his earlier novels mountains symbolize America. [1989 SUNY SEMINAR]
• McWilliams, John (Middlebury College), Revolution and the Historical Novel : Cooper's Transforming of European Tradition. The Spy and Lionel Lincoln reject the wavering European hero of Scott, Balzac, and Pushkin, but accept the notion of innate character. [1991 SUNY SEMINAR]
• 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]
• Pickering, James H. (Michigan State University), New York in the Revolution: Cooper's Wyandotté. Cooper's local historical sources for the novel, depicting the Revolution in central New York as a civil war. [1968 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Pikus, Michael J. (Niagara County Community College), James Fenimore Cooper's New York: Crossing the Border From Fiction to History. In his final work, an introduction to a never-completed history, Cooper reflects both his dispondence with American civilization and his continued realism in accepting new interpretations of it. [2004 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Ravage, Jessie A. (Independent Scholar, Cooperstown), The Home Book of the Picturesque : Father and Daughter. In this 1852 anthology, JFC's academic essay "American and European Scenery Compared" contrasts with SFC's more personal and place-specific "A Dissolving View," which prefigures realistic American regional sketches. [1999 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Redekop, Ernest H. (University of Western Ontario), Cooper's Emblems of History. Using landscape to portray history in The Last of the Mohicans, Satanstoe, The Heidenmauer, and The Crater (in the last, Thomas Cole's The Course of Empire). [1989 SUNY SEMINAR]
• 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]
• 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]
• 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]
• 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]
• Whitehill, Walter Muir (Boston Athenaeum), Cooper as a Naval Historian. Importance of Cooper's Naval History. [1954 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Williams, Kennedy Jr. (University of Kentucky), Cooper's Use of American History. Especially in Lionel Lincoln and The Last of the Mohicans. [1978 SUNY SEMINAR]

Indians and Frontier

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• Alpern, Will J. (Prudential-Bache Securities), Indians, Sources, Critics. Cooper's sources, especially Moravian missionaries to the Mohegan/Mohicans of Connecticut/New York; efforts to discredit Cooper by Louis Cass and Mark Twain. [1984 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Axelrad, Allan M. (California State University, Fullerton), The Last of the Mohicans and the Holocaust. Contrary to much modern criticism, Cooper's novel is essentially anti-racist, reflecting the racist reality of American culture rather than endorsing it. [2001 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Birns, Nicholas New School University), The Unknown War: The Last of the Mohicans and the Effacement of the Seven Years War in American Historical Myth. Why Cooper did not make the Iroquois the heroes of this novel. [2005 COOPER SEMINAR]
• Dolata, April (Rutgers University), Child and Cooper: Competing Perspectives on Race in Early American Fiction. The Last of the Mohicans as a response to Lydia Maria Child's Hobomok. [2005 COOPER SEMINAR]
• Fanuzzi, Robert (St. Johns University), Empire of Tears. Cooper (and Catharine Maria Sedgwick) used a feminized historical novel to transform the Indian captivity tale into the sentimental novel. [1993 SUNY SEMINAR]
• 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]
• Gentry, April D. (Savannah State University), Created Space: The Crater and the Pacific Frontier. The novel as a cautionary warning about American expansion in the Pacific, with especial reference to Hawaii. [2002 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Ganter, Granville (City University of New York Graduate Center), Voices of Instruction: Oratory and Discipline in Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans and The Redskins. Complexities in Cooper's use of "Indian oratory," and in his sources of information, [1997 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Goetzmann, William H. (University of Texas), James Fenimore Cooper : The Prairie. Hennig Cohen, ed., Landmarks of American Writing, New York: Basic Books, 1969, pp. 75-87. Analysis of novel, examining Cooper's sources and arguing that the heart of the novel is the redemption of Ishmael Bush. [1969 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Hancuff, Richard (George Washington University), Without a Cross: Writing the Nation in The Last of the Mohicans. Racial/ethnic/national control over diversity in the novel echoes the creation of the American nation. [1997 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Harding, J. Gregory (Northeastern University), "Without distinction of sex, rank, or color" : Cora Munro as Cooper's Ideal and the Moral Center in The Last of the Mohicans. Cora Munro, though a woman, not quite genteel, and of partly African ancestry, occupies the center between "savagery" and "civility," and represents Cooper's ideal for a virtuous American. [1999 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Kelly, Thomas O., II (Siena College), Whites and Indians and White Indians: The Last of the Mohicans from James Fenimore Cooper to Daniel Day Lewis. Despite its proclaimed "sensitivity," the 1992 film, like its predecessors and the novel, and reflecting American values, remains ambivalent about Native Americans. [1997 SUNY SEMINAR]
• MacDougall, Hugh C. (James Fenimore Cooper Society), The Book that Made Glens Falls Famous: An Introduction to James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. Born in the Cave at Glens Falls in 1824, Mohicans considers seriously the role of the wilderness in creating the American character, the American Indian, and the African-American. (2000) [INFORMAL TALKS]
• MacDougall, Hugh (James Fenimore Cooper Society), Behind the Adventure Curtain: The Last of the Mohicans as a Novel of Ideas. Background, and serious social and cultural content concerning the American character, Native Americans, and Race. [2005 COOPER SEMINAR]
• Madison, Robert D. (US Naval Academy), Wish-ton-Wish: Muck or Melancholy. Sources of The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish (1829) 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]
• Mann, Barbara A. (University of Toledo), Whipped Like a Dog: Crossed Blood in The Last of the Mohicans. Cooper's treatment of Cora Munro and Natty Bumppo reveals a deep understanding of the problems of mixed race -- African-American and Native American -- in colonial America. [1995 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Mann, Barbara (University of Toledo), The Other Matter at Detroit: John Heckewelder, Revolutionary Spy. Cooper's informant on Indian culture, the Moravian missionary John Heckewelder, provided General Washington with military intelligence. [1997 SUNY SEMINAR]
• 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]
• 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]
• 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]
• Parker, Arthur C. (Past President, New York State Historical Association), Sources and Range of Cooper's Indian Lore. Cooper relied on written sources like John Heckewelder, rather than studying living Indians near Cooperstown. [1954 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Peprnik, Michal (Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic), Moravian Origins of J. F. Cooper's Indians. Cooper's Indians are based on the works of Moravian Missionary John Heckewelder. [2006 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Pikus, Michael J. (Niagara County Community College), The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin and James Fenimore Cooper's Continuing Historical Paradox. The 1846 novel expresses Cooper's disgust at the Jacksonian America to which he has returned -- both for its expulsion of Native Americans and its political destruction of a liberal landed gentry. [1997 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Sawaya, Francesa (Cornell University), Between Revolution and Racism: Colonialism and the American Indian in The Prairie. Cooper's Indians reflect colonialism and the "sentimentalized racism" of his day. [1989 SUNY SEMINAR]
• 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]
• Starna, William A. (SUNY Oneonta), Cooper's Indians: A Critique. Ethnohistorical background to the New York Indians of the Leatherstocking Tales. [1979 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Stauffer, John (Harvard University), Interracial Friendships in The Deerslayer. In creating the Natty Bumppo/Chingachgook and similar interracial relationships, Cooper sought to fulfill the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, in imagination if not in reality, and exerted an enormous influence on American literature. [2003 COOPER SEMINAR]
• Suzuki, Taisuke (Asahi University, Japan), The True Beginning of Native American Novels by James Fenimore Cooper and Helen Hunt Jackson. Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales and Jackson's Ramona (1884) as pioneering novels treating Native Americans seriously. [2001 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Taylor, Alan (University of California at Davis), The Great Change Begins: Settling the Forest of Central New York The real lives of the first settlers of Otsego County (prototypes of Cooper's The Pioneers); economic, social, and environmental. [1995 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Wallace, James D. (Boston College), "The Paradise of Women": The Domestic Sphere in Notions of the Americans. Contradictory notions of separate spheres (for women, Indians, etc.) pervade both Notions and Cooper's other writings. [1986 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Wallace, Paul A.W. (Editor, Pennsylvania History), Cooper's Indians. Delawares and Iroquois ("Mingos") in the Leatherstocking Tales based on Heckewelder; legend of Delaware as "women" explored. [1954 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• 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]
• Zhang, Aiping (California State University at Chico), Can the Twain Meet through Acculturation? The Cultural Hybrids in Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales. Cooper often portrays acculturation of Native Americans (such as The Pioneers' John Mohegan), but concludes that real acculturation between Indian and white is not possible. [1997 SUNY SEMINAR]

Landscape and its Aesthetics

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• Axelrad, Allan M. (California State University at Fullerton), Epiphany at Ischia: The Effect of Italy on James Fenimore Cooper's Literary Landscape Painting. How Cooper fell in love with Italian scenery, learned to tell picturesque from sublime, and feared the wilderness. [1993 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Axelrad, Allan M. (California State University, Fullerton), From Mountain Gothic to Forest Gothic and Luminism: Changing Representations of the Landscape in the Leatherstocking Tales and in American Painting. How Cooper's views of landscape changed, both when he returned from Europe and later. [2005 COOPER SEMINAR]
• Beard, James F., Jr. (Dartmouth College), Cooper and his Artistic Contemporaries Close ties, personal and in vision, between Cooper and his artistic contemporaries, notably Cole, Dunlap, Greenough, and Morse. [1954 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Bailey, Brigitte (University of New Hampshire), The Panoptic Sublime and the Formation of the American Citizen in Cooper's Wing-and-Wing and Cole's Mount Etna from Taormina, Sicily. Novel and the painting both make use of a panoramic view, reflecting parallel changes in their creators' outlooks in the 1840s. [1997 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Crawford, James (Curator, Canajoharie Library and Art Gallery), James Fenimore Cooper and the Art of the Erie Canal. New York landscape art influenced by Cooper's Notions of the Americans and The Last of the Mohicans. [1997 SUNY SEMINAR]
• D'Ambrosio, Paul S. (New York State Historical Association), Light Upon the Glimmerglass: Cooper and the American Landscape Painters of Otsego Lake. The Otsego of The Pioneers, Home as Found, and The Deerslayer contrasted with that of 19th century landscape painters. [1991 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Denne, Constance Ayers (Baruch College, City University of New York), Cooper's Use of Setting in the European Trilogy. Settings in The Bravo, The Heidenmauer, and The Headsman as artistic keys to Cooper's meaning. [1980 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Donahue, James (University of Connecticut), Representing Cooper’s Landscape: The N.C. Wyeth Illustrations. The significance of N.C. Wyeth's well-known illustrations of The Last of the Mohicans. [2005 COOPER SEMINAR]
• Foulon, Jacqueline (University of Paris), Landscape as Referential Paradox in The Last of the Mohicans. The use of landscape to create a fictional past. [2005 COOPER SEMINAR]
• Peck, H. Daniel (University of California at Santa Barbara), Place into Space: from The Pioneers to The Deerslayer. Otsego Lake as the center of Cooper's imagination. [1979 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Ravage, Jessie A. (Independent Scholar, Cooperstown), The Home Book of the Picturesque : Father and Daughter. In this 1852 anthology, JFC's academic essay "American and European Scenery Compared" contrasts with SFC's more personal and place-specific "A Dissolving View," which prefigures realistic American regional sketches. [1999 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Redekop, Ernest H. (University of Western Ontario), Cooper's Emblems of History. Using landscape to portray history in The Last of the Mohicans, Satanstoe, The Heidenmauer, and The Crater (in the last, Thomas Cole's The Course of Empire). [1989 SUNY SEMINAR]
• 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]
• 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]

Language & Rhetoric

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• Ashley, Leonard R.N. (Brooklyn College, City University of New York), The Onomastics of Cooper's Verbal Art in The Deerslayer and Elsewhere. Conscious artistry in Cooper's use of names compensates for his other literary faults. [1980 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Clarke, Colin A. (George Washington University), Like a Mirror Reflecting Itself: Natty Bumppo, The Virginian, and the Fate of the American Frontier. The Last of the Mohicans prefigures the American "Western novel," but its multiplicity of voices (heteroglossia) distinguishes it from Owen Wister's classic "Western." [1997 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Egan, Hugh (Ithaca College) Cooper's Career in the First Person. Cooper's "first person" writings, beginning with the biographical Ned Myers and continuting through The Redskins, in which—contrary to accepted wisdom—Hugh Littlepage's rantings may not reflect the author's views on the rent controversy. [2001 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Engell, John (San Jose State University), Reading and Hearing Natty Bumppo's Last Word in The Prairie. Musings on the possible meanings of the illiterate Natty's dying word: "here"—or is it "hear"? [2001 SUNY SEMINAR]
• 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]
• Ganter, Granville (City University of New York Graduate Center), Voices of Instruction: Oratory and Discipline in Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans and The Redskins. Complexities in Cooper's use of "Indian oratory," and in his sources of information, [1997 SUNY SEMINAR]
• 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]
• Madison, Robert D. (United States Naval Academy), Wish-ton-Wish: Muck or Melancholy. Sources of The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish (1829) 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]
• Mate, Laurence (University of Chicago), How Rhetoric Figures in Cooper's Fiction; Or, Epitaph Upon Epitaph. As exemplified in The Chainbearer and other novels, Cooper uses rhetoric in complex ways that are important in understanding his meaning. [1991 SUNY SEMINAR]
• 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]
• 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]
• Ringe, Donald A. (University of Kentucky), Cooper's Mode of Expression. Cooper's complex descriptive genius, exemplified in Lionel Lincoln, Wyandotté and especially The Pioneers. [1978 SUNY SEMINAR].
• Starobin, Christina (Saugerties, New York), Who Owns the Land and Who Cares for It. Metaphors of birds and beasts in The Prairie [2001 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Walker, Warren S. (Blackburn College), Elements of Folk Culture in Cooper's Novels. Cooper's extensive use of American folklore, proverbs, and dialect. [1954 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Walker, Warren S. (Texas Tech University), Cooper's Fictional Use of the Oral Tradition. Cooper's use of folk speech, folk types, and folk-lore, with a detailed, annotated bibliography. [1980 SUNY SEMINAR]

New York History and Culture

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• Alpern, Will J. (Prudential-Bache Securities), Indians, Sources, Critics. Cooper's sources, especially Moravian missionaries to the Mohegan/Mohicans of Connecticut/New York; efforts to discredit Cooper by Louis Cass and Mark Twain. [1984 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Axelrad, Allan (California State University, Fullerton), Christmas in Cooperstown and Templeton: The Coopers and the Invention of an American Holiday Tradition. How both James and Susan Fenimore Cooper, in The Pioneers and Rural Hours, commented on and contributed to creating American Christmas traditions (keynote address). [2003 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Bender, Thomas (University of California, Davis), James Fenimore Cooper and the City. Abandoning his reliance on the rural gentleman as the backbone of society, Cooper, contrary to accepted interpretations, began by mid-century to look to the new urban commercial elite. [1970 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Butterfield, L[yman] H. (Princeton University), Judge William Cooper (1754-1809): A Sketch of His Character and Accomplishment. The first scholarly study of the life of James Fenimore Cooper's father. [1949 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Butterfield, Lyman H. (Institute of Early American History and Culture), Cooper's Inheritance: The Otsego Country and its Founders William Cooper and the early history of Otsego County. [1954 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Carso, Kerry Dean (Oneonta, New York), The Old Dwelling Transmogrified: James Fenimore Cooper's Otsego Hall. James Fenimore Cooper's remodelling of Otsego Hall, creating the second Gothic mansion in America. [2001 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Crawford, James (Curator, Canajoharie Library and Art Gallery), James Fenimore Cooper and the Art of the Erie Canal. New York landscape art influenced by Cooper's Notions of the Americans and The Last of the Mohicans. [1997 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Cooper, James Fenimore (grandson of author), William Cooper and Andrew Craig's Purchase of Croghan's Land. Rebuttal of Volwiler's 1923 allegations concerning William Cooper's 1786 acquisition of part of the "Croghan Patent". [1931 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• D'Ambrosio, Paul S. (New York State Historical Association), Light Upon the Glimmerglass: Cooper and the American Landscape Painters of Otsego Lake. The Otsego of The Pioneers, Home as Found, and The Deerslayer contrasted with that of 19th century landscape painters. [1991 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Dunn, James Taylor (Librarian, New York State Historical Association), Troskolaski and Cooper. When a Polish refugee landed on Cooper's doorstep in 1834, helping him proved not so easy. [1949 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Ellis, David Maldwyn (Hamilton College), The Coopers and the New York State Landholding Systems. Cooper, property, and the "anti-rent wars"; the Littlepage novels (Satanstoe, The Chainbearer, and The Redskins). [1954 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Ellsworth, Waldo (First National Bank of Cooperstown), Cooperstown's First Bank. History of the Otsego County Bank, 1830-1866, one of whose principal depositors (and check writers) was James Fenimore Cooper. [1941 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• 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]
• Holden, James Austin (State Historian of New York), The Lineage of Colonel George Monro. The real-life career and ancestry of Col. Munro (George Monro) of Fort William Henry, as provided by Scottish lawyer John A. Inglis. [1914 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Holden, James Austin (University of the State of New York), The Last of the Mohicans, Cooper's Historical Inventions, and his Cave. After criticizing and investigating Cooper's "errors" in anachronistic use of the name "Glenn's", renaming Lake George as "the Horican", and giving Col. Munro his daughters Cora and Alice, Mr. Holden (a retired State Historian of New York) explores the history of Glens Falls and its caves (with many early descriptions), the true story of Lt. Col. George Monro of Fort William Henry [continued from a 1914 article], and the bridges spanning the cave-covered island. [1917 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Larkin, F. Daniel (SUNY Oneonta), Cooper Country.Local historical background to Cooper's life and work. [1978 SUNY SEMINAR]
• MacDougall, Hugh C. (James Fenimore Cooper Society), Cooperstown's Cooper. How Cooperstown influenced Cooper, and was reflected in his works. [1989 SUNY SEMINAR]
• MacDougall, Hugh C. (James Fenimore Cooper Society), The Pioneers as History. A detailed outline of The Pioneers with extensive notes and questions focused on the novel's depiction of early Cooperstown and early America. (1994) [WRITINGS]
• MacDougall, Hugh C. (James Fenimore Cooper Society), Making a Place Historic: The Coopers and Cooperstown. How three generations of Coopers gave their differing visions of Cooperstown to the world. (1998) [INFORMAL TALKS]
• Pikus, Michael J. (Niagara County Community College), James Fenimore Cooper's New York: Crossing the Border From Fiction to History. In his final work, an introduction to a never-completed history, Cooper reflects both his dispondence with American civilization and his continued realism in accepting new interpretations of it. [2004 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Parker, Arthur C. (Past President, New York State Historical Association), Sources and Range of Cooper's Indian Lore. Cooper relied on written sources like John Heckewelder, rather than studying living Indians near Cooperstown. [1954 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Pickering, James H. (Michigan State University), New York in the Revolution: Cooper's Wyandotté. Cooper's local historical sources for the novel, depicting the Revolution in central New York as a civil war. [1968 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Pickering, James A. (Michigan State University), Cooper's Otsego Heritage: The Sources of The Pioneers. Sources in Cooperstown local history. [1979 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Starna, William A. (SUNY Oneonta), Cooper's Indians: A Critique. Ethnohistorical background to the New York Indians of the Leatherstocking Tales. [1979 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Taylor, Alan (Boston University), Who Murdered William Cooper? The family tradition of William Cooper's murder, accepted by generations of biographers and critics, is without foundation; William Cooper died a peaceful and natural death. [1991 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Taylor, Alan (University of California at Davis), The Great Change Begins: Settling the Forest of Central New York The real lives of the first settlers of Otsego County (prototypes of Cooper's The Pioneers); economic, social, and environmental. [1995 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Volwiler, A[lbert] T. (Ph.D.), George Croghan and the Development of Central New York, 1763-1800. The efforts of George Croghan, Indian agent and land speculator, to establish a settlement centered on Lake Otsego, and of William Cooper's eventual acquisition of much of the "Croghan Patent". [1923 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Walker, Warren S. (Blackburn College), Elements of Folk Culture in Cooper's Novels. Cooper's extensive use of American folklore, proverbs, and dialect. [1954 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Walker, Warren S. (Texas Tech University), Cooper's Yorkers and Yankees in the Jeffersonian Garden. A Jeffersonian agrarian democrat confronts the commercial Yankee invasion of New York. [1980 SUNY SEMINAR]

Political Views and Philosophy

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• Adams, Charles H. (University of Virginia), "The Guardian of the Law"; George Washington's Role in The Spy. Conflict in Cooper between law and higher principle, especially as seen in The Spy. [1984 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Axelrad, Allan M. (University of Pennsylvania), History and Utopia: A Study of the World View of James Fenimore Cooper. Norwood, PA: Norwood Editions, 1978. (x, 231 p.) © 1978 by Allan M. Axelrad, and placed on-line with his permission. A major and provocative study of Cooper's intellectual and religious views, as reflected in a detailed study of his novels and other writings. [WRITINGS]
• Axelrad, Allan M. (California State University at Fullerton), "Aristocracy forsooth!...the blackguard is the aristocrat" : James Fenimore Cooper on Congress and Capitalism. His reputation to the contrary, Cooper detested "aristocracy," which he associated with rising American capitalism. [1995 SUNY SEMINAR]
• 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]
• Bender, Thomas (University of California, Davis), James Fenimore Cooper and the City. Abandoning his reliance on the rural gentleman as the backbone of society, Cooper, contrary to accepted interpretations, began by mid-century to look to the new urban commercial elite. [1970 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Buchholz, Douglas (University of Pennsylvania), Landownership and Representations of Social Conflict in The Pioneers. A Marxist reading of the novel, with Cooper as a proto-Marxist "socio-historical realist" employing "supreme...socio-ideological acuity." [1989 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Fiedler, Leslie A. (SUNY Buffalo), James Fenimore Cooper: The Problem of the Good Bad Writer. Cooper's "schlock" reveals American culture's racist, sexist, imperialist, and genocidal underside. [1979 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Gentry, April D. (Savannah State University), Created Space: The Crater and the Pacific Frontier. The novel as a cautionary warning about American expansion in the Pacific, with especial reference to Hawaii. [2002 OTHER ARTICLES]
• 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]
• Grossman, James (Lawyer and biographer), Cooper and the Responsibility of the Press. American freedom threatened by public opinion and an unscrupulous press; Cooper's libel suits, Home as Found, and The American Democrat. [1954 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Michaelsen, Scott (SUNY Buffalo), Cooper's Monikins: Contracts, Construction, and Chaos. Cooper's views of Constitutional (and contract) interpretation are at the heart of The Monikins. [1991 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Okada, Ryoichi (Niigata University, Japan), Irreconcilable Conflicts in The Pioneers. Chiba Review, No. 10 (1988), pp. 1-18. There can be no reconciliation between Natty Bumppo's "redskin" culture of nature and truth, and Judge Temple's "paleface" culture of artificiality and falsehood. A Japanese view. [1988 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Owen, William (Ryerson Polytechnic University, Toronto), Cooper's Speculations on a New Moral America in the Novels of the 1840s. Cooper's adoption of the "Scottish" Common Sense philosophy facilitated his abandonment, in the later novels, of political for familial and religious solutions to national moral dilemmas. [1997 SUNY SEMINAR]
• 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]
• Pikus, Michael J. (Niagara County Community College), James Fenimore Cooper's New York: Crossing the Border From Fiction to History. In his final work, an introduction to a never-completed history, Cooper reflects both his dispondence with American civilization and his continued realism in accepting new interpretations of it. [2004 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Ringe, Donald A. (University of Kentucky), The Bravo : Social Criticism in the Gothic Mode. Brilliant use of Gothic literary style to depict a Republic reduced to totalitarian terror by commercial greed; 18th century Venice in history; America (??) in the future. [1991 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Schachterle, Lance (Worcester Polytechnic Institute), Cooper's Attitude toward England. Cooper's complex reactions, reflected in Notions of the Americans, Gleanings in Europe: England, and, much more ambiguously, in his fiction. [1982 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Spiller, Robert E., (University of Pennsylvania), Second Thoughts on Cooper as a Social Critic. Detailed retrospective review of Cooper scholarship from Spiller's own 1931 treatise to 1951. [1954 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Walker, Warren S. (Texas Tech University), Cooper's Yorkers and Yankees in the Jeffersonian Garden. A Jeffersonian agrarian democrat confronts the commercial Yankee invasion of New York. [1980 SUNY SEMINAR]

Race and African-Americans

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• Axelrad, Allan M. (California State University, Fullerton), The Last of the Mohicans and the Holocaust. Contrary to much modern criticism, Cooper's novel is essentially anti-racist, reflecting the racist reality of American culture rather than endorsing it. [2001 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Baym, Max I. (Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute) and Percy Matenko (Brooklyn College), The Odyssey of The Water-Witch and a Susan Fenimore Cooper Letter. An 1886 letter to recipient of a manuscript page gives background on writing and publication of The Water-Witch, noting inter alia that Americans in 1830 Dresden were expected to be black. [1970 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Dolata, April (Rutgers University), Child and Cooper: Competing Perspectives on Race in Early American Fiction. The Last of the Mohicans as a response to Lydia Maria Child's Hobomok. [2005 COOPER SEMINAR]
• Gentry, April D. (Savannah State University), Created Space: The Crater and the Pacific Frontier. The novel as a cautionary warning about American expansion in the Pacific, with especial reference to Hawaii. [2002 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Hancuff, Richard (George Washington University), Without a Cross: Writing the Nation in The Last of the Mohicans. Racial/ethnic/national control over diversity in the novel echoes the creation of the American nation. [1997 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Harding, J. Gregory (Northeastern University), "Without distinction of sex, rank, or color" : Cora Munro as Cooper's Ideal and the Moral Center in The Last of the Mohicans. Cora Munro, though a woman, not quite genteel, and of partly African ancestry, occupies the center between "savagery" and "civility," and represents Cooper's ideal for a virtuous American. [1999 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Lockard, Joseph (University of California at Berkeley), Cooper, Heidegger and the Language of Death: Or, Why is Natty Bumppo Speaking Ebonics? The Pioneers turkey-shooting scene seen as genocidal racism, an example of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger's "inauthentic Da-sein." [1997 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Ludski, Zoë (Ryerson Polytechnic University), My Coloured Thoughts: Last of the Mohicans and Perceptions of Mixed Race Peoples. 1999 Southwest Graduate Literature Symposium (Tempe, AZ, March 1999). Cora Munro and the problems of mixed-racial background. [1999 OTHER ARTICLES]
• MacDougall, Hugh C. (James Fenimore Cooper Society), The Book that Made Glens Falls Famous: An Introduction to James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. Born in the Cave at Glens Falls in 1824, Mohicans considers seriously the role of the wilderness in creating the American character, the American Indian, and the African-American. (2000) [INFORMAL TALKS]
• MacDougall, Hugh (James Fenimore Cooper Society), Behind the Adventure Curtain: The Last of the Mohicans as a Novel of Ideas. Background, and serious social and cultural content concerning the American character, Native Americans, and Race. [2005 COOPER SEMINAR]
• Madison, Robert D. (United States Naval Academy), "Gib a Nigger Fair Play" : Cooper, Slavery, and the Spirit of the Fair. Cooper expressed essentially racist and pro-slavery views in Notions of the Americans, The Chainbearer, and the posthumously published "New York." [1991 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Mann, Barbara A. (University of Toledo), Whipped Like a Dog: Crossed Blood in The Last of the Mohicans. Cooper's treatment of Cora Munro and Natty Bumppo reveals a deep understanding of the problems of mixed race -- African-American and Native American -- in colonial America. [1995 SUNY SEMINAR]
• 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]
• 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]
• Tawil, Ezra F. (Brown University), Romancing History: The Pioneers and the Problem of Slavery. By using the Indian/settler issue, Cooper was able to engage indirectly the taboo subject (in ante-bellum America) of slavery, opening the road to a national debate. [1997 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Wallace, James D. (Boston College), Cooper and Slavery. Complexity of Cooper's anti-slavery views, as shown in Satanstoe. [1992 ALA COOPER PANEL]
• Wallace, James D. (Boston College), Race and Spiritualism in Satanstoe. A partially cancelled authorial footnote about an African-American psychic medium in Cooperstown illustrates the cultural tensions surrounding the representation of race in the novel. [1993 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Wallace, James D. (Boston College), The Black Sailor and The Red Rover. The comparatively favored status of African-American sailors in the early Republic allowed Cooper to explore racial diversity. [1995 SUNY SEMINAR]
• 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]

Reception and Scholarship at Home and Abroad

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• 1940 James Fenimore Cooper Sesquicentennnial Celebration. Description of meeting, Official Program, speeches (by Dixon Ryan Fox, Owen D. Young, and William Lyon Phelps), photographs, memorial sermon. [1941 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Buchenau, Barbara (University of Goettingen, German), 'Wizards of the West'? How Americans respond to Sir Walter Scott, the 'Wizard of the North'. How Cooper diverged from Scott and European writers, and Child (Hobomok) and Sedgwick (Hope Leslie) carried the divergence further. [1997 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Clarke, Colin A. (George Washington University), Like a Mirror Reflecting Itself: Natty Bumppo, The Virginian, and the Fate of the American Frontier. The Last of the Mohicans prefigures the American "Western novel," but its multiplicity of voices (heteroglossia) distinguishes it from Owen Wister's classic "Western." [1997 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Clavel, Marcel (Faculté des Lettres d'Aix-en-Provence), Cooper's Reputation One Century After His Death. "A propos du centenaire de la mort de FENIMORE COOPER et du Congrès de Cooperstown de Septembre 1951: A French Tribute to James Fenimore Cooper" in Annales de la Faculé des Lettres d'Aix-en-Provence, 1956, pp. 9-10. French Cooper scholar Marcel Clavel (1894-1976) pleads for a renewal of scholarly interest in Cooper. [1956 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Daly, Robert (SUNY Buffalo), From Paradox and Aporia to Cultural Hybridization and Complex Adaptive Systems: New Theories and the Uses of Cooper at the Present Time. Contemporary literary theory continues to reveal new meanings in and deepen our understanding of Cooper's works. [1995 SUNY SEMINAR]
• D'Ambrosio, Paul S. (New York State Historical Association), Light Upon the Glimmerglass: Cooper and the American Landscape Painters of Otsego Lake. The Otsego of The Pioneers, Home as Found, and The Deerslayer contrasted with that of 19th century landscape painters. [1991 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Egger, Irmgard (University of Vienna), Cooper and German Readers. In reading Cooper Germans could dream of a freedom not found in daily life, as German children still do; but his socio/political criticism has been ignored. [1984 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Egger, Irmgard (University of Vienna), The Leatherstocking Tales as Adapted for German Juvenile Readers. Making Cooper fit -- literarily, morally, and politically -- for German youth. [1984 SUNY SEMINAR]
• House, Kay S. (Editor-in-chief, Cooper editions), Cooper's Status and Stature Now. Tour d'horizon of Cooper studies today; more esteemed abroad than at home. [1989 SUNY SEMINAR]
• House, Kay S. (Editor-in-Chief, Cooper editions), The State of Fenimore Cooper-James F. Beard Affairs. The status of the Cooper Edition, and the nature and disposition of James F. Beard's files and materials on Cooper. [1991 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Lapp, Peter C. (Queen's University, Kingston), Cooper and his Critics on Character: Distinctiveness, Design and Plausibility. Reliance of Cooper (and his early readers) on character trait psychology, exemplifed especially in The Pioneers, Wyandotté, Satanstoe, and The Prairie, and reactions of contemporary and modern critics. [1989 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Logacheva, Tamara (Ladomir Publishing, Moscow), James Fenimore Cooper--200 Years of Admiration. Cooper's long-standing success in Russia. [2003 COOPER SEMINAR]
• Madison, Robert D. (United States Naval Academy), Cooperstown's Contribution to Cooper Scholarship. Cooperstown's contributions to growth of Cooper appreciation. [1984 SUNY SEMINAR]
• McNulty, Robert (High School winner of Cooper Essay Contest), Leatherstocking and the American Spirit. Natty Bumppo is the incarnation of the American Spirit. [1941 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Pascal, Richard (Australian National University), Hawkeye and Chingachgook in the Outback: James Fenimore Cooper in Australian Literature. Though Cooper was widely read in 19th century Australia, his romantic portrayal of Native Americans and his environmental concerns struck few chords, and he was rarely imitated. [1989 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Person, Leland S., Jr. (Indiana University-Purdue University at Fort Wayne) The Leatherstocking Tradition in American Fiction: or, The Sources of Tom Sawyer: A Descriptive Essay. The source of Tom Sawyer, in characters, theme, and many plot details is -- Cooper's The Pioneers! [1986 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Pickering, James H. (Michigan State University), Fenimore Cooper in Our Time. James F. Beard's new Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper is an exemplary compilation casting important new light on Cooper's life, character, and thought. [1970 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Pickering, James H. (University of Houston), Cooper in New Dress: The Writings of James Fenimore Cooper. Background and editorial standards of the new "Cooper Edition" of the State University of New York Press in Albany, and review of the first four volumes. [1982 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Ringe, Donald A. (University of Kentucky), Cooper Today: A Partisan View. Critical survey of Cooper criticism up to 1989, and call for examination of the religious and moral vision central to his work as a whole. [1989 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Spiller, Robert E., (University of Pennsylvania), Second Thoughts on Cooper as a Social Critic. Detailed retrospective review of Cooper scholarship from Spiller's own 1931 treatise to 1951. [1954 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Suzuki, Taisuke (Asahi University, Japan), Some Comments on the Critical History of James Fenimore Cooper. Survey of 25 articles and book reviews relating to Cooper, published in American Literature between 1930 and 1955. [1995 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Thorp, Willard (Princeton University), Cooper Beyond America. European enthusiasm for Cooper's novels. [1954 NY HISTORY ARTICLES]
• Viñuela Angulo, Urbano (Universidad de Oviedo, Spain), El Ideario Politico y Social de James Fenimore Cooper. Summary of a Cooper Roundtable at the 5th Annual Conference of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies (AEDEAN), Oviedo, Spain, 1982. [1982 OTHER ARTICLES
• Viñuela Angulo, Urbano (Universidad de Oviedo, Spain), James Fenimore Cooper: Entre la popularidade y la transformación textual. Analysis of Spanish translations of Cooper's novels, including a list of known translations. [1993 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Viñuela Angulo, Urbano (Universidad de Oviedo, Spain), Introducción -- El último mohicano. Introduction to a 1997 Spanish edition of The Last of the Mohicans, including list of known Spanish translations. [1997 OTHER ARTICLES]
• 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]

Religion and Morality

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• Adams, Charles H. (University of Virginia), "The Guardian of the Law"; George Washington's Role in The Spy. Conflict in Cooper between law and higher principle, especially as seen in The Spy. [1984 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Axelrad, Allan M. (University of Pennsylvania), History and Utopia: A Study of the World View of James Fenimore Cooper. Norwood, PA: Norwood Editions, 1978. (x, 231 p.) © 1978 by Allan M. Axelrad, and placed on-line with his permission. A major and provocative study of Cooper's intellectual and religious views, as reflected in a detailed study of his novels and other writings. [WRITINGS]
• Carleton, Chris (Universiti Sain Malaysia, Penang), Justice and Moral Courage in The Spy. Cooper's concern is moral rather than social, in contrast to British novels by Godwin, Bulwer-Lytton, and Dickens. [1995 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Daly, Robert (SUNY Buffalo), Cooper’s Creole: Literature and Ethics in America. (Keynote Address) Multiculturalism and virtue ethics, especially in The Last of the Mohicans. [2005 COOPER SEMINAR]
• Hales, John (California State University at Fresno), American Millenialism and The Crater. Despite comparisons with Thomas Cole's The Course of Empire, Cooper's The Crater is theologically and historically optimistic. [1989 SUNY SEMINAR]
]
• Harding, J. Gregory (Northeastern University), "Without distinction of sex, rank, or color" : Cora Munro as Cooper's Ideal and the Moral Center in The Last of the Mohicans. Cora Munro, though a woman, not quite genteel, and of partly African ancestry, occupies the center between "savagery" and "civility," and represents Cooper's ideal for a virtuous American. [1999 SUNY SEMINAR]
• 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]
• Kandl, John (New York University), Natty and the Judge: The Pictorial Development of An Ambivalent Theme in The Pioneers. Four scenes from the novel illustrate the irreconcilable conflict between the values of Natty and of Templeton. [1989 SUNY SEMINAR]
• MacDougall, Hugh C. (James Fenimore Cooper Society), Examining Man's "Latent Sympathies" in The Heidenmauer. A morality tale about the frailties of men who are neither all good nor all bad. [1995 SUNY SEMINAR]
• MacDougall, Hugh (James Fenimore Cooper Society), Peeling the Onion: Looking for Layers of Meaning in The Deerslayer. Nine layers of meaning, from juvenile to profound, in The Deerslayer. [2003 COOPER SEMINAR]
• Marshall, Ian (Pennsylvania State University, Altoona), Cooper's "Course of Empire": Mountains and the Rise and Fall of American Civilization in The Last of the Mohicans, The Spy, and The Pioneers. In The Crater Cooper borrowed Thomas Cole's mountain image to symbolize God; in his earlier novels mountains symbolize America. [1989 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Mani, Lakshmi (Rochester Institute of Technology), James Fenimore Cooper and the Apocalpyse. End-of-the world motifs in the Leatherstocking Tales and The Crater [1980 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Okada, Ryoichi (Niigata University, Japan), Irreconcilable Conflicts in The Pioneers. Chiba Review, No. 10 (1988), pp. 1-18. There can be no reconciliation between Natty Bumppo's "redskin" culture of nature and truth, and Judge Temple's "paleface" culture of artificiality and falsehood. A Japanese view. [1988 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Owen, William (Ryerson Polytechnic University, Toronto), Cooper's Speculations on a New Moral America in the Novels of the 1840s. Cooper's adoption of the "Scottish" Common Sense philosophy facilitated his abandonment, in the later novels, of political for familial and religious solutions to national moral dilemmas. [1997 SUNY SEMINAR]
• 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]
• Phinit-Akson, Helen [Dr. Helen James] (Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand), Ritual and Aesthetics: The Influence of Europe on the Art of Fenimore Cooper. Bangkok: Thammasat University Press, 1976. 114 p. Placed on-line with permission of the author. Detailed and sympathetic exploration of Cooper's profound and orthodox Christian religious beliefs, centered on faith and redemption, as expounded in eight novels: The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish, The Bravo, The Heidenmauer, The Headsman, The Wing-and-Wing, Mercedes of Castile, The Oak Openings,, and The Sea Lions. [WRITINGS]
• Ringe, Donald A. (University of Kentucky), Cooper Today: A Partisan View. Critical survey of Cooper criticism up to 1989, and call for examination of the religious and moral vision central to his work as a whole. [1989 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Roberson, Henry P. (Oklahoma State University), James Fenimore Cooper and Catholicism. How Cooper found a powerful spirituality in the Catholicism he observed in Europe, which surprised, intrigued, and may have changed him. [2003 SUNY SEMINAR]
• 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]
• 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]

Sea Tales and US Navy

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• Introductory Notes by Editor-in-Chief Barry Gough and Guest Editor Robert Foulke. The American Neptune, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Fall 1997), pp. 296-297. Introduction to Special Issue concerning Cooper's maritime writings. [1997 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Darnell, Donald (University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Cooper's Problematic Pilot: "Unrighteous Ambitions" in a Patriotic Cause. Cooper questions the character of John Paul Jones (Mr. Gray), in The Pilot because, despite his heroism, he is not a real gentleman. [1989 SUNY SEMINAR]
• Dudley, William S. (Naval Historical Center), James Fenimore Cooper's Ned Myers: A Life Before the Mast. The American Neptune, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Fall 1997), pp. 323-329. Importance to maritime history of Cooper's biography of an ordinary sailor. [1997 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Egan, Hugh (Ithaca College) Enabling and Disabling the Lake Erie Discussion: James Fenimore Cooper and Alexander Slidell Mackenzie Respond to the Perry/Elliott Controversy. The American Neptune, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Fall 1997), pp. 343-350. How the famous dispute over the Battle of Lake Erie began as a discussion of facts, and ended up as an increasingly nebulous argument about words. [1997 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Franklin, Wayne (Northeastern University), Introduction: Becoming James Fenimore Cooper. The American Neptune, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Fall 1997), pp. 299-314. Overview of the biographic study of Cooper; biographic, psychological and literary aspects of Cooper's 1826 assumption of "Fenimore" as a middle name. [1997 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Franklin, Wayne (Northeastern University), Cooper as Passenger. The American Neptune, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Fall 1997), pp. 351-357. How Cooper's favored status as a Captain's protegé on the Stirling in 1806-07 affected his attitudes towards the sea both in his life and in novels such as Homeward Bound. (1838). [1997 OTHER ARTICLES]
• Harthorn, Steven (University of Tennessee, Knoxv