Redefinitions -- Feminist analytics and regionalism in U.S. literary history -- Origins : the history of an impulse -- The poetics of empathic narration -- Free to say : thematics -- The sketch form and conventions of story -- Regionalism and the question of the American -- Feminist epistemology and the regionalist standpoint -- Race, class, and questions of region -- Regionalism as "queer" theory -- "Close" reading and empathy