From her childhood explorations with vivisection through her adult sense that human life was characterized by cyclical encounters with death and disaster, Willa Cather was devoted to making art in the face of violence. Twenty-three critics contribute to the fullest explication to date of Cather, violence, and the arts, exploring thematic representations of violence in war, suicide, sexual trauma, shame, and rage as well as aesthetic responses to violence through literary choreographies and encounters with kind and unkind things.