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  • Grateful for the Push:A Tribute to LaVonne Ruoff
  • Chadwick Allen (bio)

It goes without saying that LaVonne Ruoff has been a guiding force in developing and promoting the study of American Indian literatures. For many of us, she has been much more than that: a welcoming mentor into the field, a personal champion, and, at times—when she felt we were holding back on our potential—a firm push into the more public roles of professional responsibility and leadership. Many MLA delegates and many of the ASAIL officers of the last decade—including the current editor of SAIL—were first "encouraged" to attend meetings and later "persuaded" to take on various responsibilities by the force that is LaVonne Ruoff. She coached us to become innovative teachers and scholars; as important, she demonstrated for us how to be savvy academics within our institutions while remaining compassionate members of our communities.

My own first encounter with LaVonne was through her scholarship. When I entered my Ph.D. program at the University of Arizona in 1991, eager to get to the business of analyzing native novels and poems, Larry Evers told me that, before anything else, I needed to read LaVonne's American Indian Literatures: An Introduction, Bibliographic Review, and Select Bibliography, which had been published by the MLA in 1990. I remember that Larry made a point of saying that I would want to study LaVonne's book carefully—and return to it often. He was right: indeed, I did, and I did want to. My copy of American Indian Literatures is well thumbed and heavily marked by a decade and more of use. It helped me to write a dissertation and a book of my own. LaVonne's example of careful reading and contextualization [End Page 71] and her dedication to bibliographic research, especially to the recovery of native texts that have been lost to the inattention of mainstream scholarship, continues to challenge and inspire.

I did not actually meet LaVonne until I began to attend meetings of the MLA. In 1996, the year I was on the job market, I was fortunate to be part of an ASAIL-sponsored panel on the topic of American Indian oratory that was chaired by Malea Powell and included a paper by Ginny Carney. We were all graduate students, and LaVonne was there in our audience, which was terrifying but extremely pleasing. Over the next several years, all three of us became caught up in LaVonne's ongoing mission to bolster the presence of American Indian literary studies at the MLA by supporting the work of new scholars. Encouraged by LaVonne and others, I attended my first ASAIL business meeting at the 1997 MLA, where I successfully proposed a panel for the next year. The three provocative papers on that panel, titled "Indigenous Texts in Colonial and Post-Colonial Contexts," attracted a large audience at the 1998 conference and generated a lively discussion. Afterward, LaVonne told me that I would attend the business meeting again that year. The next thing I knew, I was nominated to run for ASAIL vice president. LaVonne had gently pushed, and, quite suddenly it seemed, I was in the thick of things.

LaVonne has a long association with the Newberry Library in Chicago, which houses what is probably the best collection of materials on nineteenth-century American Indian history in the United States. I was swept up again by LaVonne's energy and intention when she encouraged me to apply to the 2001 Lannan Summer Institute on American Indian history, which was held at the Newberry. Although LaVonne wrote a letter of support for my application—which I considered extremely generous, since I had never worked with her as a student—I was not accepted. Given the specific topic, only historians had been invited into the small seminar. LaVonne was not pleased. She made a point of contacting me personally to explain what had happened; she also made a point of saying that I would apply again the next year. The 2002 seminar was led by Kate Shanley, and it focused on American Indian autobiography; I have no doubt that [End Page 72] LaVonne had a hand in...

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