Payton, Jason
T 12:30 PM
Park Hall 0061
David Armitage declared in 2002 that “We are all Atlantacists now.” This programmatic claim helped establish the Atlantic studies paradigm as a critical locus for scholars working in a range of disciplines and periods. This paradigm has supplied a heuristic and a vocabulary for scholarly projects that transgress the boundaries of traditional, nationalist paradigms. 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 theory 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.
We will focus heavily on the 15th-19th centuries, but we will reserve space at the end of the course to explore later texts relevant to the specific research projects of the seminar's participants. Students will have significant input in shaping the selection of texts during this portion of the course.
The course will be useful for students planning to sit for exams in the transnational networks area and for students whose research interests involve Atlantic crossings or a maritime/oceanic focus.