Transatlantic Literary Exchanges, 1790-1870 Gender, Race, and Nation

Exploring the ways in which transatlantic relationships functioned in the nineteenth century to unsettle hierarchical models of gender, race, and national and cultural differences, this collection demonstrates the generative potential of transatlantic studies to loosen demographic frames and challenge conveniently linear histories. The contributors take up a rich and varied range of topics, including Charlotte Smith's novelistic treatment of the American Revolution, The Old Manor House; Anna Jameson's counter-discursive constructions of gender in a travelogue; Felicia Hemans, Herman Melville, and the 'Queer Atlantic'; representations of indigenous religion and shamanism in British Romantic literary discourse; the mid-nineteenth-century transatlantic abolitionist movement; the transatlantic adventure novel; the exchanges of transatlantic print culture facilitated by the Minerva Press; British and Anglo-American representations of Niagara Falls; and Charles Brockden Brown's intervention in the literature of exploration. Taken together, the essays underscore the strategic power of the concept of the transatlantic to enable new perspectives on the politics of gender, race, and cultural difference as manifested in late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain and North America.

Contents: Introduction: mobilizing gender, race, and nation, Kevin Hutchings and Julia M. Wright; Part 1 Transatlantic Mobility: Gender and Sexuality: Charlotte Smith and the spectre of America, Jared Richman; Romantic aesthetics, gender, and transatlantic travel in Anna Brownwell Jameson's Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada, Charity Matthews; Felicia Hemans, Herman Melville and the queer Atlantic, Daniel Hannah. Part 2 Reconfiguring Race: Prophets of resistance: Native American shamans and anglophone writers, Tim Fulford; Frederick Douglass and transatlantic echoes of 'the color line', Bridget Bennett; Pirates and patriots: citizenship, race and the transatlantic adventure novel, Sarah H. Ficke. Part 3 Cultural Exchanges: Print, Tourism, and Politics: Charles Brockden Brown and England: of genres, the Minerva Press, and the early republican reprint trade, Eve Tavor Bannet; Romantic Niagara: environmental aesthetics, indigenous culture, and transatlantic tourism, 1794-1850, Kevin Hutchings; Beyond the American empire: Charles Brockden Brown and the making of a new global economic order, Wil Verhoeven; Bibliography; Index.

Kevin Hutchings is Professor of English and Canada Research Chair in Literature, Culture, and Environmental Studies at the University of Northern British Columbia, and Julia M. Wright is Associate Professor of English and Canada Research Chair in European Studies at Dalhousie University.