Essays
Western US Literature and Cultural Studies
"Deadwood's Barbaric Yawp: Sharing a Literary Heritage." In Dirty Words in Deadwood. Ed. Melody Graulich and Nicolas Witschi. University of Nebraska Press, forthcoming.
"Building an International West" In Exploring the American Literary West: International Conference. Ed. David Rio. Euskal Heriko: Universidad del Pais Vasco, 2007: 39-56.
"I'm Just a Lonesome Korean Cowgirl: Adoption and National Identity." Postwestern Cultures: Literary, Theory, Space. Ed. Susan Kollin. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007: 186-2005.
"Prepositional Spaces: Family Photographs, History, and Storytelling in Memoirs by Contemporary Western Writers." In Western Subjects: Autobiographical Writing in the North American West. Ed. Kathleen Boardman and Gioia Woods. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2005: 386-419.
"'Cameras and photographs were not permitted in the camps': Photographic Documentation and Distortion in Japanese American Internment Narratives." True West. Ed.William Handley and Nathaniel Lewis. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004: 222-256.
"Cultural Criticism, circa 1974." American Literary History. Fall, 2004: 536-542.
"Gettin' Hitched in the West." North Dakota Quarterly. Vol. 69, No. 4 (Fall 2002): 31-47
"Western Biodiversity: Rereading Nineteenth-Century American Women's Writing." Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers: A Critical Reader. Ed. Karen Kilcup. London and New York: Blackwell Press, 1998: 47-61.
"Violence against Women in Literature of the Western Family." Frontiers VII: 3 (1984): 14-20. Reprinted as "Violence Against Women: Power Dynamics in the Western in Literature of the Western Family" in The Women's West, ed. Susan Armitage and Elizabeth Jameson. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987: 111-125.
"Jean Stafford's Western Childhood: Huck Finn Joins the Camp Fire Girls." Denver Quarterly (Spring, 1983): 39-55. Reprinted in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Roger Matuz. Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1993.
Owen Wister
"Monopolizing The Virginian–or—Railroading Wister." Montana: The Magazine of Western History (Spring 2006): 30-41. Winner of the Paladin Prize for the best essay published in Montana: The Magazine of Western History in 2006.
"What if Wister Were a Woman?" In Reading The Virginian in the New West: Centennial Essays. Ed. by Melody Graulich and Stephen Tatum, with an introduction by Melody Graulich. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004: 198-212.
Mary Austin
"Creating Great Women: Mary Austin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman." Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the Company of Friends. Ed. Denise Knight. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004: 139-154.
"Walking Off an Illness? Don't Go West, Young Man." In Exploring Lost Borders: A Collection of Essays on Mary Austin. Ed. Melody Graulich and Betsy Klimasmith, with an introduction by Melody Graulich. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1999: 267-82.
"Until Tomorrow—Journeys' Ending and Beginning." Introduction to reprint of Mary Austin's The Land of Journeys' Ending. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003: ix-xxv.
"Plotting North American History with a New Compass." Afterword to reprint of Mary Austin's The Trail Book. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2004: 211-227.
Cactus Thorn, a previously unpublished novel by Mary Austin. Edited and with an introduction and afterward by Melody Graulich. Reno and Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 1988.
"A Book You Can Walk Around In." Afterward to a reprint of Mary Austin's Earth Horizon. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991.
"Mary Austin." Dictionary of Literary Biography: American Short-Story Writers 1880-1910. Ed. Bobby Ellen Kimbel. Detroit, MI: Bruccoli Clark Layman, 1989: 13-20
Wallace Stegner
"Ruminations on Stegner's Protective Impulse and the Art of Storytelling." Wallace Stegner and the Continental Vision. Ed. Curt Meine. Washington D.C.: Island Press, 1997: 43-60.
"Book Learning: Angle of Repose as Literary History." Wallace Stegner: Man & Writer. Ed. Charles Rankin. University of New Mexico Press, 1996: 231-253.
"The Guides to Conduct that a Tradition Offers: Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose." South Dakota Review. 23, No. 4 (Winter, 1985): 87-106.
American Indian Literature and Culture
"Unearthing the Chumash in The Second Sight." Studies in American Indian Literatures. Vol. 22, No. 2 (Summer, 2010): 1-21.
"The Salinas Valley: Autobiographical, Critical, and Environmental Musings on Steinbeck and Owens." The Steinbeck Review. Vol. 4, No. 1 (Spring 2007): 33-48.
"Leslie Silko." The Columbia Companion to the Twentieth Century American Short Story. Ed. Blanche Gelfant. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993: 512-15.
Leslie Marmon Silko's "Yellow Woman: Texts and Contexts." Ed. and with an introduction by Melody Graulich. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1993.
Feminist Criticism and Theory
"Writing Women's Biographies: Processes, Challenges, Rewards," a panel discussion with Mary Clearman Blew, Susanne George Bloomfield, Melody Graulich, and Judy Nolte Temple." Western American Literature 43.2. Summer, 2008: 179-203.
"Opening Windows Toward the Sea: Harmony and Reconciliation in American Women's Sea Literature." Iron Men and Wooden Women: Gender and Anglo-American Seafaring, 1700-1920. Ed. Margaret Creighton and Lisa Norling. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996: 204-226.
"Speaking Across Boundaries and Sharing the Loss of a Child." Private Voices, Public Lives: Women Speak on the Literary Life. Ed. Nancy Owen Nelson. University of North Texas Press, 1995: 163-183.
"'I Thought At First She Was Talking About Herself': Mary Austin on Charlotte Perkins Gilman." The Jack London Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1994): 148-158.
"The Freedom to Say What She Pleases: A Conversation with Faith Ringgold," including an introduction, with Melody Graulich and Mara Witzling. National Women's Studies Association Journal. Vol. 6, No 1 (Spring, 1994): 1-27. Reprinted in Black Feminist Cultural Criticism. Ed. Jacquelin Bobo. John Wiley and Sons, 2001.
Piecing and Reconciling: Eliza Calvert Hall's Aunt Jane of Kentucky." In Aunt Jane of Kentucky, by Eliza Calvert Hall. Edited by Melody Graulich. Albany, NY: New College and University Press, 1992.
"Meditations on Language and Self: A Conversation with Paule Marshall," with Lisa Sisco and including an introduction by Melody Graulich. The National Women's Studies Association Journal, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Fall, 1992): 282-302. Reprinted in Conversations with Paule Marshall. Ed. James C. Hall and Heather Hathaway. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2012.
"'O Beautiful for Spacious Guys': An Essay on 'the Legitimate Inclinations of the Sexes.'" The Frontier Experience and the American Dream. Ed. David Mogan, Paul Bryant, and Mark Busby Texas Christian University Press, l989.
"Mary Hallock Foote (1847-1938)." Legacy, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Fall, 1986): 43-52.
"Somebody Must Say These Things." Women's Studies Quarterly, Vol. XIII, Nos. 3 & 4 (Fall/Winter, 1985): 2-8. Reprinted in The Intimate Critique: Autobiographical Literary Criticism. Ed Olivia Frey, Diane Freedman and Frances Zauhar. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1992. Reprinted in The Curious Reader: Exploring Personal and Academic Inquiry. Ed Bruce Ballenger and Michelle Payne. New York: Longman, 2003.
"Every Husband's Right: Sex Roles in Mari Sandoz's Old Jules." Western American Literature. (May, 1983): 3-20. Winner of the Walker prize for best essay published on western American literature in 1983.
Pioneering the Imagination: Eudora Welty's The Robber Bridegroom." Women and Western American Literature. Ed. Helen Stauffer and Susan Rosowski. Troy, NY: Whitston Publishing Co., 1982: 283-296.
"Melville's Most Fascinating Confidence Man." American Transcendental Quarterly (Fall, 1981): 229-236.
"'Wimmin is my theme, and also Josiah': The Forgotten Humor of Marietta Holley." American Transcendental Quarterly (Summer/Fall, 1980): 283-296. Reprinted in Nineteenth Century American Humor.
"'They ain't nothing but words': Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood." Flannery O'Connor Bulletin (1978): 64-83.