Secret History; or, The Horrors of St. Domingo and Laura.  Ed. Michael J. Drexler.  Ontario, Canada: Broadview, 2007.

“Based on Leonora Sansay’s eyewitness accounts of the final days of French rule in Saint Domingue (Haiti), Secret History is a vivid account of race warfare and domestic violence.  Sansay’s writing provocatively draws comparisons between Saint Domingue during theHaitian Revolution and thepostrevolutionary United States, while fluidly combining qualities of the eighteenth-century novel, colonial travel writing, and political analysis.”

March 10th, 2009 | Category: .Annotated Bibliography | Leave a comment

Because mine will probably be the only class on the colonial Caribbean Rim that most students in my graduate course will take, I always worry about what sort of coverage I can and should do. What issues of coverage do various people consider to be important? I personally have a predilection towards for geograpgic issues, so showing how words write place in spatial terms is something I find important to include. Growing out of that come the need to deal with the variety of languages/cultures present in the Caribbean. What otjer issues should be considered central to studying the literature and culture of the Caribbean before 1830 or so? And what are the problems with insuring coveage of those issues? For example, I want to treat gender issues, especially how European concepts of gender are carried on and/or changed in a colonial Caribbean context. However, finding texts by women writers before the eighteenth century is difficult, and there is even a limited respresentation of women in many of the texts before 1700 or so.

March 1st, 2009 | Tags: coverage, gender, mapping, representation, spatial imaginary | Category: .All, .Discussion Topic, .Questions, Shields: E. Carolina University | Leave a comment

Dr. Tom Shields
2112 Bate
(252) 328-6715
ShieldsE@ecu.edu

Class Hours:
WWW

Office Hours:
Tues. 4:00-6:00 pm
Thurs. 10:00 am-12:00 pm
Others readily available by appointment

ENGL 6215

American Literature to 1830

This class will examine writings from the Caribbean Rim during the period from European contact in 1492 until the beginning of the nineteenth century; literature from what is now the United States South, highlighting North Carolina, will be explored in the context of its connection to the Caribbean. Writings about exploration, mercantilism, slavery, and more will be covered.

Class materials may be downloaded and run off from the ECU Blackboard web site <http://ecu.blackboard.com/>. The most current version of the to syllabus, including any changes and corrections, will be that on Blackboard.

Books
The following books are required for the course:

Casas, Bartolomé de las. An Account, Much Abbreviated, of the Destruction of the Indies: With Related Texts. Ed. Franklin W. Knight. Trans. Andrew Hurley. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 2003.

Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings. Ed. Vincent Carretta. New York: Penguin, 2003.

Krise, Thomas W. Caribbeana: An Anthology of English Literature of the West Indies, 1657-1777. Chicago: U of Chicago p, 1999.

Quinn, David B., and Alison M. Quinn, eds. The First Colonists: Documents on the Planting of the First English Settlements in North America 1584-1590. Raleigh: North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, Division of Archives and History, 1982.

Other readings will be assigned from online sources and/or may be available through the Course Documents section of the Blackboard site.

Schedule

Week 1, January 9-18: First Encounters

• Christopher Columbus, The Columbus Letter (online at <http://www.usm.maine.edu/~maps/columbus/>; see especially section 1.2, “Reproduction,” for the illustrations, and section 1.4, “Translation”).
• Pero Vaz de Caminha, from The Letter (online under Course Documents).
• From The Popol Vuh (online under Course Documents).

Week 2, January 16-23: Roanoke and the First English Colonies

• Arthur Barlowe, “Arthur Barlowe’s Narrative of the 1584 Voyage,” The First Colonists, 1-12.
• “Journal of the 1585 Voyage,” The First Colonists, 13-19.
• Ralph Lane, “Ralph Lane’s Narrative of the Settlement of Roanoke Island 1585-1586,” The First Colonists, 24-45.

Week 3, January 23-30: Roanoke and the “Lost Colony”

• Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, The First Colonists, 46-76.
• John White, “John White’s Narrative of the 1587 Virginia Voyage,” The First Colonists, 93-106.
• John White, “John White to Richard Hakluyt, 4 February 1593,” The First Colonists, 115-16.
• John White, “John White’s Narrative of the 1590 Virginia Voyage,” The First Colonists, 117-30.

Week 4, January 30-February 6: Spain and the “Black Legend”

• Bartolome de las Casas, The Destruction of the Indies.

Week 5, February 6-13: Spain and the “Black Legend”

• Bartolome de las Casas, The Destruction of the Indies.
• Francisco Pareja, Catecismo en lengua Timuquana, y Castellana, en el qual se instruyen y cathequizan . . . (online under Course Documents).

Week 6, February 13-20: Richard Hakluyt and the Caribbean

• Richard Hakluyt, ed., The Principall Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (online under Course Documents).
  • Philips, Miles. “A Discourse Written by One Miles Philips Englishman, One of the Company Put on Shoare Northward of Panuco, in the West Indies, by M. Iohn Hawkins 1568.”
  • Withal, John. “A Letter Written to M. Richard Staper by Iohn Whithal from Santos in Brasil, the 26. of Iune 1578.”
  • Lancaster, James. “The Well Gouerned and Prosperous Voyage of M. Iames Lancaster, Begun with Three Ships and a Galley-Frigat from London in October 1594, and Intended for Fernambuck, the Porte-Towne of Olinda in Brasil.”
  • Lopez Vaz. “The First Voyage Attempted and Set Foorth by the Expert and Valiant Captain M. Francis Drake Himselfe, with a Ship Called the Dragon, and Another Ship and a Pinnesse, to Nombre de Dios, and Dariene, About the Yeere 1572.”
  • “A Relation of a Memorable Fight Made the 13. of Iune 1591. Against Certaine Spanish Ships and Gallies in the West Indies, by 3. Ships of the Honorable Sir George Carey Knight.”
  • Parker, William. “A voyage of Master William Parker of Plimmouth gentleman, to Margarita, Iamaica, Truxillo, Puerto de Cauallos situate within the bay of Honduras, and taken by sir Anthony Sherley and him, as likewise vp Rio dolce.”
• Each student will find one sixteenth or early seventeenth-century item of interest from an online database (either through Joyner Library or some other source) to share with the class.
• Optional Reading:
  Walter Raleigh, The Discouery of the Large, Rich, and Beautiful Empire of Guiana, Voyages and Discoveries (various electronic and online editions available under Course Documents).

Week 7, February 20-27: The Bermuda Pamphlets

• Silvester Jourdain, A discovery of the Barmudas (online under Course Documents).
• Richard Rich, Nevves from Virginia: The Lost Flocke Triumphant (online under Course Documents).
• Lewes Hughes, A letter, sent into England from the Summer Ilands (online under Course Documents).
• Optional Reading:
  William Shakespare, The Tempest (available online at <http://shakespeare.mit.edu/works.html>).

Week 8, February 27-March 6: Satire, Promotional Literature, and Mercantilism

• Edward Ward. A Trip to Jamaica, Caribbeana, 77-92.
• Ebenezer Cook, The Sot-Weed Factor (Online at <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/sotweed.htm>)CLOSE READING DUE BY 8:00 AM MONDAY, MARCH 9.

March 8-15, SPRING BREAK

Week 9, March 6-20: The Portrayal of Race

• Richard Ligon, extract from A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados, Caribbeana, 16-30.
• “A Speech Made by a Black of Guardaloupe,” Caribbeana, 94-100.
• “The Speech of Moses Bon Sàam,” Caribbeana, 101-07
• Robert Robertson, The Speech of Mr. John Talbot Campo-bell, Caribbeana, 108-40.
• Frances Seymour, “The Story of Inkle and Yarico” and “An Epistle from Yarico to Inkle, After he Had Left Her in Slavery,” Caribbeana, 141-46.

Week 10, March 20-27: Georgics

James Grainger. The Sugar Cane, Caribbeana, 166-260.

Week 11, March 27-April 3: Images from the Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Spanish and French Caribbean Rim

• Benedict Leutenegger, trans. “Two Franciscan Documents on Early San Antonio, Texas” (online under “Course Documents”).
• Patricio Hinachuba and Andres, Cacique of San Luis, Letters (1699) (online under “Course Documents”).
• Charles Levasseuer, “From Fort Bilochies [Biloxie, or Maurepas] the 28th of May 1701 [1700]” (online under “Course Documents”).
• Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz, from The History of Louisiana (online under “Course Documents”).

Week 12, April 3-13: Poetry and Politics in the Late Eighteenth Century

• Robert Mumford, The Candidates (online under “Course Documents”).
• The Mecklenburg Censor, A Modern Poem (online under “Course Documents”).
• The “Ingenious Lady” of Barbados, “Poems from Caribbeana,” Caribbeana, 147-65.

Week 13, April 13-20: Afro-Caribbean Writing in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries

• Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative and Other WritingsRESEARCH PROJECTS DUE

Week 14, April 20-27: Afro-Caribbean Writing in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries

• Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings
• François Dominique Toussaint L’Ouverture, from The Memoir (online under “Course Documents”).

April 28-29, Reading Days

Week 15, April 30-May 7: FINAL EXAM PERIOD

FINAL EXAM ESSAY DUE BY 4:30 PM THURSDAY, MAY 7.

Grades
Grades will be determined by a close reading, a research project, a final examination, and online class discussion. The breakdown of the final grade is as follows:

Close Reading                    25%
Research Project                35%
Final Examination               20%
Class Discussion                 20%
100%

Close Reading
You will do a 5-8 page close reading of a work from the syllabus. The idea is to interpret from your own perspective as a modern reader. What is an important point the work makes and what in the work brings across this point? As a close reading, there is no research requirement, though a few (no more than two or three) well-chosen sources can be useful to provide background. Due by 8:00 am, Monday, March 9.

Research Papers
You will do 10-12 page typed research projects. Projects will use MLA documentation format. For these projects, locate a work not on the syllabus, then describe and analyze the work. You will give a short presentation of your findings to the class through a class discussions submission during the final week of class.

Discuss the project with the professor and other classmates when choosing a work to write about and formulating your ideas. The  analysis should be based on your own reading of the text and on outside research, i.e., secondary sources. Secondary sources are used to help develop your own ideas and to show how your ideas compare or contrast with those other people have expressed about the same work or general topic. Secondary sources might include other people’s critical readings of the works, theoretical texts (e.g., literary theory, psychological theory, philosophy, etc.), histories of the period, other contemporary texts, and so forth. Project due by 8:00 am, Monday, April 20; presentation of project to class due by Monday, April 27.

Online Class Discussion:
Each week, each student will be responsible for making at least two submissions to the class online discussion that is available through the Discussion Board in the Communications section of the class Blackboard site.

There will sometimes be specific assignments for one or more of these entries, and often there may be one or more suggested or required prompts to respond to, but often students will be able to create their own discussion threads. There is no fixed length for the entries, but keep in mind that short one-sentence statements or responses (i.e., “I didn’t like this poem at all”; “The narrative was pretty interesting”; “Me, too!”) won’t be counted as meeting the required responses for the week. At the same time, this is an informal discussion in an online environment, so overly long entries can be hard for people to read and respond to. A good rule of thumb is that a few sentence to no more than a couple short to medium paragraphs works best for most entries.

Discussion entries/responses/threads can be used to do a number of different things, and students will most likely use them in different ways for different readings. The following are some things you can think about as ways of approaching class discussion threads:

• React to a specific scene or two in the reading, not only describing the scene, but telling why it interests you.
• Record specific quotations of interest, along with some note about why you find the quotation interesting.
• Note what would be good discussion questions for the class about the reading.
• Explore connections between general ideas discussed in class and specific elements of the work.
• Explore connections between elements of the work and modern day events.
• Explore parallels or differences between the work and other things you have read in class or outside class.
• Note elements of the story that weren’t clear either because of the way they were written or because of references to things you don’t know about-specific words, historical events, etc.

Use the entries to help figure out what is happening literally in the works, but also to figure out approaches you might use for the close reading and how the work you choose for the project compares and/or contrasts with other works of colonial era Caribbean Rim writing.

One last note. If you would like to receive notice in your email that someone has added a new entry to a discussion forum, you can click on the “Subscribe” button at the top of any forum section.

Examination
The final exam will be an essay comparing works by four different authors on a single theme topic. You will chose your own theme topic top address and the four works you want to write about. The works must be ones on the syllabus.

You will need to think about how the theme ideas developed in the different works on the shared topic are similar to and/or different from one another, giving some idea of why you feel the similarities or differences occur.

The essay will be 500-1000 words (5-10 paragraphs, 3-5 pages) and should include parenthetical page citations as well as a works cited list. Due by 5:00 pm, Thursday, May 7.

March 1st, 2009 | Tags: 1492-1830, graduate seminar, multilingual texts, North Carolina-the South-and the Caribbean | Category: .All, .Whole Syllabi, Shields: E. Carolina University | Leave a comment

Kris has asked me to post an initial discussion question to begin our conversation.  Below is my effort in that direction; I am eager to hear your thoughts and ideas!

Teaching Caribbean materials in early American literature courses requires that students erase a contemporary map of geography and of culture that decisively separates the U.S. and the Caribbean and bring into view an earlier map of the colonial Atlantic world that links the colonies of North America and the Caribbean. How does one go about this work of remapping? How does one erase or redraw an existing geographical and cultural imaginary in favor of a decidedly different one that held sway in the 18th century? How important is the spatial imaginary in relation to the reading of literary and historical texts? And where and how might political and economic issues appear in the work of mapping and remapping–i.e., in relation to the spatial imaginary?

February 25th, 2009 | Tags: mapping, spatial imaginary | Category: .Discussion Topic, .Questions, Dillon: Northeastern | Comments (6)

ENG 4934-08 Dr. Candace Ward

Senior Seminar: Caribbean Gothic WMS 113; 4-1833

12:30-1:45 candace.ward@fsu.edu

WMS 318 Office Hrs: T, R 9:30-10:30

Course Overview: As Markman Ellis observes in History of the Gothic, Great Britain’s position as the dominant slave trading nation during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries exerted a clear influence on the development of gothic fiction. In this course, we will read a variety of texts that demonstrate the intersections between the gothic and the “horrors” of slavery—works published before and after the abolition of that institution. Texts to be covered include “Isle of Devils” and excerpts from Journal of a West India Proprietor by Matthew Lewis, author of one of the most famous eighteenth-century gothic novels, The Monk; the little known Caribbean novel, Hamel the Obeah Man (1827), which deals with colonial anxieties over African religious practices and slave insurrections; Jane Eyre, with its (Creole) madwoman in the attic and Jean Rhys’s Creole reply, The Wide Sargasso Sea; The White Witch of Rosehall (1929), a persistently popular twentieth-century Jamaican gothic potboiler; A High Wind in Jamaica (1929), Richard Hughes’s disturbingly sly depiction of Edwardian childhood; Anthony Winkler’s hilarious critique of Jamaican and American culture, The Duppy; and, finally, Jamaica Kincaid’s Autobiography of My Mother and Pauline Melville’s Migration of Ghosts, contemporary works whose gothic overtones reflect the haunting legacy of slavery and colonialism. We’ll also watch White Zombie, starring Bela Lugosi and set in Haiti, and, if time, the film adaptation of A High Wind in Jamaica.

In examining the ways that slavery and race informed and “Gothicized” popular conceptions of the Caribbean, we will draw on a number of theoretical approaches—e.g., postcolonialist, feminist, and materialist theories—found in the critical conversations surrounding these primary texts.

Required Texts

Isle of Pines, Henry Neville (Bb)

Isle of Devils, Matthew Lewis (Bb)

Journal of a West India Proprietor, Lewis (excerpts, Bb)

Hamel the Obeah Man (Bb)

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte (Bill’s Bookstore)

Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Ryss (Bill’s Bookstore)

The White Witch of Rosehall, H. G. DeLisser (Bill’s Bookstore)

High Wind in Jamaica, Richard Hughes (Bill’s Bookstore)

Autobiography of My Mother, Jamaica Kincaid (Bill’s Bookstore)

The Duppy, Anthony Winkler (Bill’s Bookstore)

Migration of Ghosts, Pauline Melville (Bill’s Bookstore)

Plus critical readings (TBA)

Course Requirements & Policies (See also “Essay Grading Policy”)

Major Assignments

• 2 short papers (5 to 7 pages; no research)—15% each
• Midterm Exam—20%
• Library Assignment (see assignment posted in Blackboard’s Course Library)—20%
• Participation, Quizzes—10%
• Final Exam—20%

NB: ALL assignments must be completed in order to receive a passing grade for the course.

Both papers will be “Turn-it-In Assignments,” and must be posted on Blackboard by 5 p.m. of the due date. In addition, you must turn in a hard copy of the papers at the beginning of class on the due date.

Preparation

As senior English majors, you are expected to actively participate in class discussions. Although I will provide background information and explain some of historical, political, and social influences at work in the assigned texts, I expect you to have read the materials carefully and critically prior to class meeting, and to be prepared with comments and/or pertinent questions regarding them. If it appears that students have not read the assignments, I will resort to reading quizzes, which will be factored in the final grade.

Attendance

Attendance and participation are factored into your final grade. After more than three absences, your final grade will drop one full letter grade. For those first three absences, I do not need any documentation; just be aware that after three, your grade will be affected. If you do miss class, you are responsible for getting notes, assignments, syllabus changes, etc., from one of your classmates.

February 19th, 2009 | Category: .All, .Whole Syllabi, Ward: Florida State | Leave a comment

ENL 5236 Dr. Candace Ward

Studies in the Eighteenth-Century Novel: WMS 113; 4-1833

Anglo-Caribbean Texts and Contexts candace.ward@fsu.edu

T, R 3:35-4:50, WMS 114 Office Hrs: T, R 10:30-11:45

Course Overview. Hoping to develop a more comprehensive picture of eighteenth-century British literature and culture, literary critics have increasingly turned their attention to the Caribbean. According to Caribbean scholars this critical reappraisal is both necessary and overdue given the centrality of the Caribbean colonies and the Atlantic slave trade to the development of modern British capitalism and culture. We will take part in this reassessment by examining a variety of novels in English with a Caribbean connection, and explore the contradictions and paradoxes embedded in representations of the region over the course of the long eighteenth century. Many of the novels, like Sarah Scott’s sentimental novel The History of Sir George Ellison were written by authors who never traveled to the “Torrid Zones.” Others, like J. W. Orderson’s Creoleana, Herbert De Lisser’s White Witch of Rose Hall, and Anthony Winkler’s The Duppy were produced by West Indians whose firsthand experiences of life in the tropics strongly mark their writing. (De Lisser’s novel, though published in 1929, is set in late eighteenth-century Jamaica; Winkler’s Duppy was published in 1997 and provides a humorous—and iconoclastic—illustration of the way colonial attitudes continue to shape contemporary Caribbean culture.) In addition to such fictional works, we will read nonfiction prose accounts of the Caribbean, ranging from excerpts from the journals of Thomas Thistlewood, who served for over thirty years as an overseer on a sugar estate, to first-person slave narratives related by Olaudah Equiano and Mary Prince.

A major portion of the course will be devoted to examining how slavery and race informed popular conceptions of the West Indies and West Indians. To assist us in this project we will draw on a number of critical approaches—e.g., postcolonialist, feminist, and materialist theories—to analyze the primary texts.

Required Texts

Henry Neville, The Isle of Pines (Blackboard)

Aphra Behn, Oroonoko

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

Sarah Scott, The History of Sir George Ellison

Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative

William Earle, Obi; The History of Three-Finger’d Jack. In a Series of Letters

Anon., Hamel, the Obeah Man

Mary Prince, History of Mary Prince

J. W. Orderson, Creoleana

Herbert De Lisser, White Witch of Rose Hall

Anthony Winkler, The Duppy (purchase online)

Plus any readings placed in Bb Course Library

Course Requirements

· Participation. This course will be conducted as a seminar, with background material supplied when necessary. Students are expected to actively participate in class discussion. (15%)

· 10-page paper (no research). Topics will be due two weeks before the paper is due; conferences are advised but not mandatory for the short paper. This paper requires a close, analytical reading of one of the texts covered prior to the due date. (20%)

· 20- to 25-page paper, MLA documentation, of publishable quality. A 1- to 2-page abstract will be due three weeks before the final paper, a draft will be due two weeks before the due date, and a mandatory conference will be held one week before the paper is due. Peer review workshops may be conducted if time allows. You will also be asked to submit a list of three scholarly journals or conference paper calls to which you would submit your paper. (30%)

· Supplemental Reading. Each student will be asked to read one additional critical essay and share that information with the class. A handout with an abstract of the article and bibliographical information will be required for distribution. (15%)

· Lesson Plan. Each student will be required to develop a 50-minute lesson plan focusing on some aspect of eighteenth-century studies, either a particular work or narrative technique, or critical approach. The unit should include the following:

—a 1- to 2-page lesson plan including a description of the class (survey? Undergraduate? Graduate?), and goals and objectives for the class period;

—an annotated bibliography of 7 to 10 secondary sources for use by others teaching the material (two of these should emphasize pedagogical issues);

—questions for class discussion and/or any in-class activities;

—excerpts from the text for in-class close analysis;

—5 objective quiz questions and 2 essay test questions

Students will distribute the lesson plan and spend some class time discussing how they might teach it. (20%)

Reading Schedule (Subject to Change)

Week 1

T, 1/6: Course Introduction

Syllabus Review

R, 1/8 Isle of the Pines (Bb)

Linebagh and Rediker, “Wreck of the Sea-Venture” (Bb)

Week 2

T, 1/13: Oroonoko

Brown, “Romance of Empire” (Bb)

R, 1/15 Oroonoko

Week 3

T, 1/20: Robinson Crusoe

McInelly, “Expanding Empires” (Bb)

R, 1/22: Robinson Crusoe

Week 4

T, 1/27: Robinson Crusoe

Burnard, “Thomas Thistlewood” (Bb)

R, 1/29: George Ellison

Week 5

T, 2/3: George Ellison

Lewis, “Pro-Slavery Ideology” (Bb)

R, 2/5: Interesting Narrative

Week 6

T, 2/10: Interesting Narrative

Fanon, Black Skin/White Masks (Bb)

R, 2/12: Obi

Paper 1 Due

Week 7

T, 2/17: Obi

Aravamudan’s introduction

R, 2/19: Hamel

Week 8

T, 2/24: Hamel

Watson, Ward, Intro to Broadview Hamel (Bb)

R, 2/26: Hamel

Week 9

T, 3/3: Hamel

James, Black Jacobins (Bb)

R, 3/5: TBA

Week 10

NO CLASS—SPRING BREAK

Week 11

T, 3/17: Burn!

Dubois, “Enslaved Enlightenment” (Bb)

R, 3/19: Burn!

Week 12

T, 3/24: Mary Prince

Salih’s introduction

R, 3/26: Mary Prince

Week 13

T, 3/31: Creoleana

Bush, “Black Women’s Identity” (Bb)

R, 4/2: Creoleana

Week 14

T, 4/7: Creoleana

R, 4/9: White Witch

Week 15

T, 4/14: White Witch

R, 4/16: White Witch

Week 16

T, 4/21: The Duppy

Robinson-Walcott, from Out of Order! (Bb)

R, 4/23: The Duppy

Paper 2 Due

February 19th, 2009 | Tags: early colonial context, graduate seminar, slavery and emancipation | Category: .Whole Syllabi, Ward: Florida State | Leave a comment

The following is a “script” that I put together to help give the students in “Caliban and His Sisters” a quick introduction to the debates surrounding Shakespeare’s play and its American connections.  It includes excerpts from scholarly publications, which I’ve tried to arrange for dramatic effect, scenes from Shakespeare’s play that emphasize the colonial connection, and a scene from Cesaire’s Une Tempete, which I included because I was interested in having my students discuss later Caribbean appropriations of the original.

A group from Purdue’s theater department performed it at the beginning of the term to an audience of faculty and students drawn from several classes, and a section of our undergraduate Shakespeare class read and discussed it, so it’s had some classroom vetting.  If there’s interest, I’ll ask whether the drama group would be willing to record their performance for posting to this site.  As you look it over, please note that I did not transcribe all the dialogue from either The Tempest or Une Tempete.  I used the 2000 Bedford edition edited by Gerald Graff and James Phelan.

I’d be interested to know how many of us use The Tempest in our classrooms–whether that’s a strategy employed by faculty outside of literature departments.  And for those of us who do use the play, how do we introduce it in the context of early Caribbean studies?

An American Tempest

Sound effects of wind, storm.

Voiceover: Prospero reading Strachey excerpt:

A dreadful storm and hideous began to blow from out the northeast, which swelling and roaring as it were by fits, some hours with more violence than others, at length did beat all light from heaven; which like an hell of darkness turned black upon us.

We were enforced to run her ashore as near the land as we could . . . We found it to be the dangerous and dreaded island, or rather islands of Bermuda . . . they be called commonly the Devil’s Islands.

———————————

Lights up. Critics on stage.

Men’s thoughts indeed were then so strongly directly towards the new world, that the success and miscarriages of the several adventurers who went there could not but have been a very general topick of conversation.

–Edmund Malone (1808)

Not a little [of The Tempest’s plot] was supplied by the topics of the time, the stirring events of a year; colonisation, and the disaster to the Virginia fleet of 1609, these suggested the title of the poet’s drama; they furnished him with his island; his atmosphere of magic, his Caliban.

— Morton Luce (1910)

It may safely be concluded, we submit, that [the 1610 report of the Sea Venture’s shipwreck at Bermuda] is no longer even a possible source for Shakespeare’s Tempest.”

– Roger Stritmatter and Lynne Kositsky (2007)

The Americas were in Shakespeare’s mind when he was inventing [Caliban].
—Stephen Orgel (1987)

It is as well to be clear that there is nothing in The Tempest fundamental to its structure of ideas which could not have existed had American remained undiscovered.

—Frank Kermode (1956)

The abundant thematic and verbal parallels between the play and “True Reportory” have persuaded generations of readers that Shakespeare borrowed liberally from Strachey’s dramatic narrative in telling his island tale. Malone and Luce were right.

–Alden T. Vaughan (2008)

These peculiar days, Prospero is regarded as a vicious Colonialist by the academic coven that calls itself Post-Colonialist.

—Harold Bloom (2006)

Lights out

Lights up on Prospero. Ariel enters

Act I, Scene 2: 189-229

Lights out

Ariel exits

Lights up on Professor

The play provided a clever clue that the story was indeed about America: Caliban, one of the principle characters, was a New World inhabitant. “Carib,” the name of an Indian tribe, came to mean a savage of American, and the term cannibal was a derivative. . . . [H]e had created [an] anagram in “Caliban.”

—Ronald Takaki (1993)

Exit Professor. Enter Prospero.

Act I, Scene 2: 322-374

Lights out

Lights up on professor.

Nearly two score American Indians and Eskimos dwelled for varying periods, mostly in London, during Shakespeare’s lifetime.”

—Alden T. Vaughan (2000)

Exit professor, enter Caliban.

Act 2, scene 2, from Une Tempete

Lights out

Lights up on professor.

Writers and intellectuals from the colonies appropriated The Tempest in a way that was outlandish in the original sense of the word. . . . [From the 1950s to the 1970s, that] turbulent and intensely reactive phase of Caribbean and African history, The Tempest came to serve as a Trojan horse, whereby cultures barred from the citadel of “universal” Western values could win entry and assail those global pretensions from within.

—Rob Nixon (1987)

Lights up on Cesaire’s Prospero

Enter Ariel

Une Tempete, p. 248-252

Lights out

Lights up on professor

Art, the art that matters, is not cement. It is mobile, complex, elusive, disturbing. A love of literature may help to forge community, but it is a community founded on imaginative freedom, the play of language, and scholarly honesty, and not on flag waving, boosterism, and conformity.

The best way to kill our literary inheritance is to turn it into a decorous liturgical celebration of the new world order. Poets cannot soar when their feet are stuck in social cement.

—Stephen Greenblatt (1991)

Miranda

O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in’t!

Curtain

February 18th, 2009 | Tags: An American Tempest, Script | Category: .All, .Discussion Topic, Bross: Purdue | Comments (1)

Caliban and His Sisters

Race and Gender in Early British Atlantic Literature

Kristina Bross

Spring 2008

Meets Thursdays 3-5:50

Office Hours: T, Th 11:45-12:45

494-3745

kbross@purdue.edu

Texts

William Shakespeare, The Tempest (Bedford/St. Martins; Gerald Graff and James Phelan, eds.)

Bartolomé de Las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (Penguin Classics)

Caribbeana (U of Chicago Press; Thomas Krise, ed.)

Aphra Behn, Oroonoko (Penguin Classics; Janet Todd, ed.)

English Trader, Indian Maid (Johns Hopkins; Felsenstein, ed.)

Anon., Female American (Bedford; Michelle Burnham, ed.)

Olaudah Equiano, Interesting Narrative (Bedford; Robert J. Allison, ed.)

Phillis Wheatley, Complete Writings (Penguin, Vincent Carretta, ed.)

Leonora Sansay, Secret History (Broadview; Michael Drexler, ed.)

Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince (U Michigan, Moira Ferguson, ed.)

PMLA October 2008, Vol. 123.3 (Special Issue on Comparative Racialization)

Recommended: Sean Goudie, Creole America (Penn)

Schedule of Readings and Assignments

Jan. 15

Introduction to the course

Jan. 22:

Shakespeare, The Tempest

William Strachey, “True Repertory of the Wrack” (in our Tempest edition)

Alden T. Vaughan. “Shakespeare’s Indian: The Americanization of Caliban.” Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Summer, 1988): 137-153. (On-line through the libraries)

Rob Nixon. “Caribbean and African Appropriations of ‘The Tempest’.” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Spring 1987): 557-578. (On-line)

Ronald Takaki, “The Tempest in the Wilderness” (in our edition)

Roger Stritmatter and Lynne Kositsky, “Shakespeare and the Voyagers Revisited,” Review of English Studies, n.s. 58 (2007): 447-72. (On-line)

If you want to follow the debate to date, see also: Alden T. Vaughan. “William Strachey’s “True Reportory” and Shakespeare: A Closer Look at the Evidence.” Shakespeare Quarterly. 59.3 (Fall 2008): 245-273. (On-line)

Jan. 29

John Smith, The Generall Historie of Virginia (on-line through History on Trial, which has additional resources: http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/trial/pocahontas/bib.php)

Karen Robertson, “Pocahontas at the Masque.” Signs 21 (1996): 551-83. (On-line)

Eric Griffin, “The Specter of Spain in John Smith’s Colonial Writing,” in Envisioning an English Empire: Jamestown and the Making of the North Atlantic World. Ed. Robert Appelbaum and John Wood Sweet. Philadelphia: Penn, 2005.

PMLA, Warrior, “Organizing Native American Studies”

PMLA, Koshy, “Why the Humanities Matter for Race Studies Today”

Feb. 5

David Armitage: “Three Concepts of Atlantic History” in The British Atlantic World, ed. David Armitage and Michael J. Braddick (CP)

Las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (this translation in conjunction with the 1656, John Philip translation, available through Early English Books On-line)

E. Shaskan Bumas. “Cannibal Butcher Shop.” Early American Literature 35.2 (2000). (On-line)

Thomas Scanlan, “Allegorical Structure of Colonial Desire” in Colonial Writing in the New World (CP)

PMLA, Mignolo, “Racism as We Sense It Today”

Feb. 12

Thomas Tryon, Friendly Advice (Caribbeana)

Philippe Rosenberg. “Thomas Tryon and the Seventeenth-Century Dimensions of Antislavery.” William and Mary Quarterly. 61.4 (2004). (CP)

Behn, Oroonoko (1688)

Stephanie Athey and Daniel Cooper Alarcon, “Oroonoko’s Gendered Economies of Honor/Horror: Reframing Colonial Discourse Studies in the Americas.” American Literature 65.3 (September 1993). (On-line).

Felicity Nussbaum, “Black Women: Why Imoinda Turns White” in The Limits of the Human. (CP).

Feb. 19

Tituba and the Salem witchcraft trials (1692); selections from the trial transcripts and from Cotton Mather, Wonders of the Invisible World. (On-line through Salem Witch-Trials, http://etext.virginia.edu/salem/witchcraft/)

Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, “Prologue: What Happened in 1692” in Salem Possessed (CP)

Veta Smith Tucker, “Purloined Identity: The Racial Metamorphosis of Tituba.” Journal of Black Studies 30 (2000): 624-634. (On-line)

Elaine Breslaw, “Tituba’s Confession: The Multicultural Dimensions of the 1692 Salem Witch Hunt.” Ethnohistory 44.3 (1997): 535-49. (On-line)

Wendy Anne Warren, “The Cause of Her Grief.” (On-line through http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/93.4/pdf/warren_jah93.4.pdf)

Feb. 26

A Speech Made by a Black of Guardaloupe (1709; Caribbeana)

The Speech of Moses Bon Saam (1735; Caribbeana)

Robert Robertson, The Speech of John Talbot-Campo-bell (1736; Caribbeana)

PMLA, Lane “ImpersoNation”

“Historicizing Race in Early American Studies: A Roundtable with Joanna Brooks, Philip Gould, and David Kazanjian.” Early American Literature 41.2 (2006). (On-line)

Close reading of Salem witch trials due

March 5

NO CLASS: SEA CONFERENCE

March 12

To make up for the cancelled class, we’ll meet twice this week, dates and times TBA.

Meeting A: Richard Ligon, A True and Exact History (1657; Caribbeana)

English Trader, English Maid

Meeting B: The Female American (1767)

Betty Joseph. “Re(Playing) Crusoe/Pocahontas: Circum-Atlantic Stagings in the Female American.” Criticism (42.3) 2000 Summer: 317-35. (On-line).

March 19

SPRING BREAK

March 26

Equiano, Surprising Narrative (1789)

Paul E. Lovejoy, “Autobiography and Memory.” Slavery and Abolition. Vol. 27, No. 3, December 2006, pp. 317–347. (On-line)

Vincent Carretta. “Response to Paul Lovejoy’s ‘Autobiography and Memory.” Slavery & Abolition. 28.1 (April 2007): 115-119. (On-line)

Paul E. Lovejoy. “Issues of Motivation—Vassa/Equiano and Carretta’s Critique of the Evidence.” Slavery & Abolition. 28.1 (April 2007): 121-125. (On-line)

April 2

Phillis Wheatley poetry selections

PMLA Chiles, “Becoming Colored in Occom and Wheatley’s American”

Henry Louis Gates “Mister Jefferson and the Trials of Phillis Wheatley.” On-line here: http://www.neh.gov/whoweare/gates/lecture.html.

Joanna Brooks, “Six Hymns by Samson Occom.” Early American Literature, 38.1: 67-87. (On-line)

April 9

Sansay, Secret History

PMLA: Lionnet, “Continents and Archipelagoes: From E Pluribus Unum to Creolized Solidarities”

April 16

Sean Goudie, guest speaker, to discuss his book Creole America and work in progress. Times, dates, and readings TBA.

April 23 (week of)

Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince (1831)

Larrabee, Mary Jeanne: “’I Know What a Slave Knows’: Mary Prince’s Epistemology of Resistance.” Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. 35:5 (July-Aug 2006): 453-73. (On-line)

PMLA, Mersal, “Eliminating Diasporic Identities”

Preparing for presentations

April 30: Presentations and Colloquium

Assignments:

15% Close reading of Salem trial

In his essay “The Language of Salem Witchcraft” (included in your coursepack), Emory Elliott argues that “language and imagination were the central components in the catastrophic events” of the Salem witch trials. Despite his call for greater attention to the “literary” dimensions of the trial records and other publications, little published criticism along these lineshas emerged. Choose a subset of the Salem witch trial records. You might choose testimony concerning particular individual or a kind of testimony—of encounters with the “black man,” for instance. You might compare the trial record’s representation of a particular individual or moment to published versions, such as Cotton Mather’s Wonders of the Invisible World. The website we’re using for class discussion is wonderful for our purposes, because it allows us to search the Salem trial records for names and even words. I’ve thought of Warren’s essay as inspiration for this assignment, since she explodes outward from a very small textual moment, though of course I’m not expecting you to research widely. Rather, I’d like you to focus on what the language itself can suggest to us. For additional background on theology and gender in Salem, I recommend Elizabeth Reis’s essay (and the book that followed), “The Devil, the Body, and the Feminine Soul in Puritan New England,” Journal of American History 82.1 (1995): 15-36 (on-line).

15% Critical bibliography

Due electronically no later than Friday, March 13 at noon, but I will accept it earlier. Choose one of our primary texts (or sets of texts) or a critical concept that interests you and construct a bibliographic essay in which you survey the criticism associated with that text. I imagine the length somewhere in the 5-8 page range, depending on what you uncover. You’ll want to consider an angle to the essay—it’s not just a listing of secondary sources but an argument or analysis of them. Among many possibilities, you might look at the history of criticism if a text has been studied for some time, or discuss the intersection of the particular studies and a larger literary history or theoretical school. You might choose a specific approach to a well-known text or author (gender or class, for instance), or you might comment about a related grouping of studies. If a text has been newly recovered, you could consider an essay that discusses why the text has garnered new interest. In all cases, some indication of existing critical gaps would be helpful, if you can identify them. I don’t expect the essay to be comprehensive, but it should hit important studies and provide the new reader with a good sense of the state of criticism about your text. I’d like to circulate these to the class so that everyone can bank your bibliographic suggestions.

60% Seminar paper

This 20-30 page paper may or may not build on your critical bibliography. While I encourage you to write on topics directly arising from our course readings and discussions, you are welcome to stretch geographically or temporally beyond the bounds of the syllabus so as to better reflect your interests. Whatever your topic, the paper must grapple with the methodological, theoretical, or thematic concerns of early modern Atlantic literary and cultural studies. In other words, you may choose to investigate contemporary retellings of early Caribbean history, to extend our consideration of the so-called “Atlantic World” to early modern Pacific texts, etc., etc., but there should be some thread clearly connecting your paper to the concerns of this class.

15% Presentation

I will ask you to make a conference-type presentation of your research. During dead week the Early American Reading Group (EARG) will be hosting a graduate colloquium for presentations of graduate papers. I strongly encourage you to submit your proposal and to present your work at this colloquium in lieu of our in-class presentation on April 30.

February 16th, 2009 | Tags: 1607-1831, English language texts, graduate seminar | Category: .Whole Syllabi, Bross: Purdue | Leave a comment