• Tracing the Nautilus
• Virginia Scharff (bio)

Long ago, I did Susan Johnson a disservice. After hearing a conference version of her landmark essay on George Armstrong Custer and gender, "A Memory Sweet to Soldiers," I opined that the last thing we needed in Western history was another anything about Custer.¹ This is my chance to say in print: I was wrong. Johnson's queering of Custer was exactly what we needed. Her prize-winning Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush (2000) showed how gendering men's history and attending to the centrality of race revealed a whole new way of understanding the California Gold Rush and the history of the American West. Over the years since, her interventions and innovations have shaped the field, and my own work (chiefly about women) in profound ways.

I believe my error arose from alarm at the turn from "women" to "gender" as the preeminent subject of feminist scholarship. I worried that women had never gotten their due as subjects of history, that before that ever happened they would once again be left off the page. It turned out that once again I was wrong. Indeed, the turn to gender, along with the work of women scholars and activists of color who critiqued racist history, decentered white women as a subject, and birthed a far richer, more promising history of women and femaleidentified and genderqueer people than I could have imagined at the time.

Johnson's new book, Writing Kit Carson: Fallen Heroes in a Changing West, represents a landmark in the fulfillment of that promise, but also more. In this sometimes ruminative, sometimes gripping volume, Johnsons shows how women's history does not simply add to, but transforms our broader understanding of history. Carolyn Brucken and I argued in our 2010 Autry Museum exhibition and book, Home Lands: How Women Made the West, that seeing women in history makes history look different. Here, Johnson shows us exactly how that works in a novel work of scholarship and lyrical narrative, enriched and enlivened with memoir, loaded with impressive research, careful citation, historiography, and bibliography. [End Page 187]

Titles should explain what a book is about. Every word of a title should do some work, as is the case here. This book is about writing, and about Kit Carson, erstwhile army scout, explorer and fighter, Great Westerner, Dear Old Kit. But the colon between the main and subtitles knocks both Carson and The West off their pedestals: Fallen Heroes in a Changing West. Johnson has set out to look beyond the little blond man, Christopher Carson, to those who built a legend around him. She tells some of their stories as a means of opening up an inquiry into how The West (as a set of places, and as what we say about those places, and why we might say those things) has changed.

In order to even see these stories, we have to clear away monumental heroes. 2020 has seen many such topplings, both imaginatively and literally across our nation and others. In New Mexico, monuments to Kit Carson and other conquering soldiers have been hauled down or disappeared. The places where they stood are empty or encased in blank plywood boxes festooned with public health notices and graffiti. The effort to replace the myths they represent will be earnest, sometimes angry, and always partial. It will require considerable thinking, action, time, and, yes, writing. It's not an easy task even for those of us who do much of our iconoclasm within the four corners of offices. Idols can be very insistent about occupying central places.

I have experience with importunate idols. When I wrote a book titled, The Women Jefferson Loved (2010), I was determined to try to understand the lives of the women in Thomas Jefferson's biracial family. I wanted to show how knowing about those women changed our understanding of Jefferson's life and work. I thought a lot about the function of "love...

• 追踪鹦鹉螺
• 弗吉尼亚·沙尔夫（生物）

很久以前，我伤害了苏珊·约翰逊。在听完她关于乔治·阿姆斯特朗·卡斯特和性别的里程碑式论文的会议版本后，我认为，我们在西方历史上最不需要的就是关于卡斯特的另一件事。¹这是我发表文章的机会：我错了。约翰逊对卡斯特的怪癖正是我们所需要的。她获奖的咆哮营：加利福尼亚淘金热的社会世界(2000) 展示了男性的性别历史和关注种族的中心地位如何揭示了理解加利福尼亚淘金热和美国西部历史的全新方式。从那以后的几年里，她的干预和创新以深刻的方式塑造了这个领域，以及我自己的工作（主要是关于女性的）。

我相信我的错误源于对从“女性”转向“性别”作为女权主义学术研究的主要主题的恐慌。我担心女性从来没有成为历史的主题，在这之前她们会再次被排除在外。事实证明，我又一次错了。事实上，转向性别，以及批判种族主义历史的女性学者和有色人种活动家的工作，将白人女性作为一个主体去中心化，并产生了比我所能想象的更丰富、更有前途的女性和女性认同和性别酷儿的历史当时的想象。

约翰逊的新书《写作工具包卡森：变化中的西部英雄》是实现这一承诺的里程碑，而且还有更多。在这本时而沉思、时而扣人心弦的书中，约翰逊展示了女性历史如何不仅增加，而且改变了我们对历史的更广泛理解。Carolyn Brucken 和我在我们 2010 年 Autry 博物馆展览和书《家园：女性如何创造西部》中争辩说，在历史中看到女性会让历史看起来不同。在这里，约翰逊向我们展示了它在一部充满学术和抒情叙事的小说作品中是如何运作的，通过回忆录丰富和活跃，充满了令人印象深刻的研究、仔细的引文、历史编纂和参考书目。[第187页结束]

标题应该解释一本书的内容。标题的每个单词都应该做一些工作，就像这里的情况。这本书是关于写作的，关于基特·卡森，昔日的陆军侦察员、探险家和战士，伟大的西方人，亲爱的老基特。但是主要和副标题之间的冒号将卡森和西部都从他们的基座上撞了下来：不断变化的西部中的堕落英雄。约翰逊已着手将目光从金发小个子克里斯托弗·卡森 (Christopher Carson) 之外的目光投向那些围绕他建立传奇的人。她讲述了他们的一些故事，以此来探究西方（作为一组地方，以及我们对这些地方的看法，以及我们为什么会说这些事情）是如何变化的。

为了看到这些故事，我们必须清除不朽的英雄。2020 年在我们国家和其他国家/地区见证了许多这样的倒台，无论是从想象中还是从字面上看。在新墨西哥州，基特·卡森 (Kit Carson) 和其他征服士兵的纪念碑被推倒或消失。他们站着的地方是空的，或者装在空白的胶合板盒子里，盒子上挂满了公共卫生告示和涂鸦。取代它们所代表的神话的努力将是认真的，有时是愤怒的，而且总是片面的。这将需要大量的思考、行动、时间，当然，还有写作。即使对于我们这些在办公室的四个角落进行大量反传统活动的人来说，这也不是一件容易的事。偶像可能非常坚持要占据中心位置。

我有过顽固的偶像的经历。当我写了一本名为《杰斐逊所爱的女人》（2010 年）的书时，我决心尝试了解托马斯杰斐逊混血家庭中女性的生活。我想展示对这些女性的了解如何改变我们对杰斐逊生活和工作的理解。我想了很多关于“爱...