ENGL4790: Topics in American Literature (48302)

Payton, Jason

TR 9:30 AM

Park Hall 0269


 

David Armitage declared in 2002 that “We are all Atlantacists now.” This claim helped establish Atlantic studies as a central paradigm for scholars working in a range of disciplines. Within literary studies, Atlantic studies has been most influential for scholars whose projects transgressed the boundaries of traditional, nationalist paradigms of literary history. Its emphasis on movement—migration, diaspora, exchange—has proved tremendously generative in the nearly two decades since Armitage’s claim, as has its emphasis on the role of the sea in the movements of peoples, goods, and ideas throughout the Atlantic littoral. 

This course will explore the rise, utility, and limitations of the Atlantic studies paradigm in two parts. Part One will survey major theoretical works and will introduce students to the vocabulary of Atlantic studies. Part Two will apply the theories to the archive. In particular, we will study the literatures of the red and black Atlantics, which comprise the histories of labor and class and the histories of race and slavery, respectively, as they played out in the Atlantic world.