ENG 381 - Special Topics in 19th-C American Literature

SPECIAL TOPIC FALL 2023: TRANSPACIFIC CROSSINGS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE AND CULTURE

What desires, curiosities, and fears first motivated US exploration and commercial ventures in east Asia and the Pacific? How have writers supported the cause of anti-imperialism in the South Pacific and Southeast Asia? Who were the earliest Asian American writers? This seminar evokes such questions as part of a broader reconsideration of the history of nineteenth-century North American literature. Although this literature is commonly understood in terms of the continent’s transatlantic relations with Europe and Africa, we will prioritize transpacific geopolitics and cultural exchanges to broaden our perspective on its complex development. With this goal in mind, we will read works by some canonical US authors, such as Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and Mark Twain, but also those of lesser-known writers of color, such as Lili’uokalani, Wong Chin Foo, José Rizal, and Edith Maude Eaton (a.k.a. Sui Sin Far). Additionally, we will examine more recent theoretical and creative works by scholars and artists to help us analyze nineteenth-century sources in terms of race, ethnicity, indigeneity, gender, sexuality, the environment, and social class, while also working to uncover an instructive “history of the present” in transpacific relations of a past era.

Anticipated Terms Offered: Periodically