The Universe of Oz

The Wizard of Oz has captured the imagination of the public since publication of L. Frank Baum’s first book of the series in 1900. Oz has shaped the way we read children’s literature, view motion pictures and experience musicals. Oz has captured the scholarly imagination as well. The seventeen essays in this book address numerous questions of the boundaries between literature, film, and stage—and these have become essential to Oz scholarship. Together the essays explore the ways in which Oz tells us much about ourselves, our society, and our journeys.

Kevin K. Durand is the dean of academics at the LISA Academy College Preparatory School in Little Rock, Arkansas. He has published broadly in philosophy, religion, and ethics.
Mary K. Leigh is a Doctoral Academy Fellow at the University of Arkansas.

Edited by Kevin K. Durand and Mary K. Leigh
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 258
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2010
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4628-5
eISBN: 978-0-7864-5622-2
Imprint: McFarland

Preface; or, Scholars Walk the Yellow Brick Road      1

PART ONE: OZ AND LITERARY CRITICISM
1. The Emerald Canon: Where the Yellow Brick Road Forks
(Kevin K. Durand)      11
2. Dorothy and Cinderella: The Case of the Missing Prince and the Despair of the Fairy Tale
(Agnes B. Curry and Josef Velazquez)      24
3. Psychospiritual Wizdom: Dorothy’s Monomyth in The Wizard of Oz
( Jené Gutierrez)      54
4. “Come out, come out, wherever you are”: How Tina Landau’s 1969 Stages a Queer Reading of The Wizard of Oz
(Ronald Zank)      61
5. “Something between higgledy-piggledy and the eternal sphere”: Queering Age/Sex in Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl
(Emily A. Mattingly)      77
6. No Place Like the O.Z.: Heroes and Hybridity in Sci-Fi’s Tin Man
(Kristin Noone)      94
7. The Wizard of Oz as a Modernist Work
(Charity Gibson)      107

PART TWO: OZ AND PHILOSOPHY
8. Ask the Clock of the Time Dragon: Oz in the Past and the Future
(Randall Auxier)      121
9. Down the Yellow Brick Road: Good and Evil, Freewill, and Generosity in The Wizard of Oz
(Gail Linsenbard)      136
10. The “Wonderful” Wizard of Oz and Other Lies: A Study of Inauthenticity in Wicked: A New Musical
(Mary K. Leigh)      147
11. Memories Cloaked in Magic: Memory and Identity in Tin Man
(Anne Collins Smith)      158
12. The Wicked Wizard of Oz
(Kevin K. Durand)      172
13. A Feminist Stroll Down the Yellow Brick Road: Dorothy’s Heroine’s Adventure
(Paula Kent)      179

PART THREE: OZ AND SOCIAL CRITIQUE
14. The Wiz: American Culture at Its Best
(Rhonda Williams)      191
15. The Wiz as the Seventies’ Version of The Wizard of Oz: An Analysis
(Claudia A. Beach)      200
16. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: Religious Populism and Spiritual Capitalism
(Kevin Tanner)      204
17. The Ethics and Epistemology of Emancipation in Oz
( Jason M. Bell and Jessica Bell)      225

About the Contributors      247
Index      251

“wide range of fascinating articles about Oz and its place in our culture”—SFRA Review.