ENGLISH 832

Transnational Articulations: Print Culture and the Imagining of Global Communities in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Fall 2009

Instructor: Dr. Leith Davis

Office: AQ 6111  Phone: 778 782-4833

Office Hours: Tuesday 3:30-4:30 and by appointment

Email: leith@sfu.ca

In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson examines the role of the newspaper and novels in promoting vernacular language and a sense of "homogeneous, empty time" which he links to the idea of the modern nation.  In this course, we will both use and go beyond the issues of national identity which Anderson and others have raised as we seek to identify the ways in which the articulation of national identities through a developing market for print culture went hand in hand with a global mapping of identity.  As citizens of England, Scotland and Ireland (and, after 1707, the newly formed Britain) imagined their own national identities, they simultaneously came to understand the way that their nation fit into a global scheme of nations.  Although in many cases their representations of other nations served to solidify their own sense of a national Self by identifying a foreign Other, in other cases, their articulations can also be seen as setting the stage for a sense of transnationalism by establishing connections that cut across national boundaries.

Case studies involving eighteenth-century print culture will be examined in relation to contemporary theories of globalization, cosmopolitanism and transnationalism.  Students will make use of the Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO) to develop their understanding of the wide and varied world of eighteenth-century print culture.  

Required texts:

Aphra Behn, Oroonoko (Norton Critical Edition)

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (Norton Critical Edition)

Samuel Johnson, Rasselas (Broadview)

Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (Broadview)

Elizabeth Hamilton, Translations of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah (Broadview)

Course Requirements:

2 seminar presentations 20%

2 seminar papers 20%

conference presentation 5%

participation 5%

final essay 50%

Objectives:

1. to consider globalization in a historical context: specifically, in what ways are concepts of global connection in the eighteenth century similar and/or different from contemporary understandings of globalization

2. to consider how print culture encouraged and/or contested ideas of global connection in the eighteenth century

3. to gain an introduction to theorizations of different forms of global connection in the eighteenth century (globalization, imperialism, colonialism, transnationalism, cosmopolitanism)

4. to gain an introduction to eighteenth-century literature exploring global connection

5. to determine what roles gender, race and class play in the imagining of global connection in the eighteenth century

Course Outline:

Week 1: September 8

Introduction to course

Reading:

*Linda Colley, Introduction in Captives: Britain, Empire and the World, 1600-1850 (1-20)

PART 1: THEORIZING GLOBALIZATION IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Week 2: September 15

The Time of Globalization

Reading:

*A.G. Hopkins, ‘Introduction: Globalization – an Agenda for Historians’ and ‘The History of Globalization – and the Globalization of History?’ in Globalization in World History (London: Pimlico, 2002).

*Cooper, Frederick. “What is the concept of Globalization good for? An African Historian’s Perspective,” African Affairs 100 (2001) 189-213.

*David Armitage, “Is there a pre-history of globalization” in Comparison and History: Europe in Cross-National Perspective, ed. Deborah Cohen and Maura O’Connor (New York: Routledge, 2004).

*Felicity Nussbaum, “Introduction” in The Global Eighteenth Century (1-18)

John Oldmixon, “Introduction” in The British Empire in America, containing the history of the discovery, settlement, progress and present state of all the British colonies (London, 1708), 1: xix-xxxviii (from ECCO).

Week 3: September 22

Theoretical Approaches to Globalization: Postcolonialism, Transatlanticism, Cosmopolitanism, Transnationalism

Reading:

*Clement Hawes, “Preface: From Crux to Critique” and “The Global Making of the British Eighteenth Century” in The British Eighteenth Century and Global Critique (xiii-28)

*Paul Gilroy, “The Black Atlantic as a Counter-Culture of Modernity” in The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1-40)

*Bruce Robbins, “Actually Existing Cosmopolitanism” in Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation (1-19)

*Rob Wilson and Wimal Dissanayake, “Introduction: Tracking the Global/Local” in Global/Local: Cultural Production and the Transnational Imaginary (1-20)

Daniel Defoe, “The True-Born Englishman” in A true collection of the writings of the author of The true born English-man. Corrected by himself (London, 1703) (from ECCO). See also the online edition at Luminarium for an easier read.

Week 4: September 29

Print Culture and Global Connection in the Eighteenth Century

Reading:

*Benedict Anderson, “Introduction” and “Cultural Roots” (1-36)

*Kathleen Wilson, “Citizenship, Empire and Modernity in the English Provinces” in The Island Race: Englishness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth Century (29-53)

A Gentleman Lately Arrived, “The history of Caledonia, or, The Scots Colony in Darien in the West Indies” (London, 1699) (from EEBO: Early English Books Online)

PART 2: CASE STUDIES

Week 5: October 6

Reading:

Aphra Behn, Oroonoko

Laura Brown, "The Romance of Empire: Oroonoko and the Trade in Slaves" (in the Norton critical edition of Oroonoko)

Week 6: October 13

Reading:

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

*Brett McInelly, “Expanding Empires, Expanding Selves: Colonialism, the Novel and Robinson Crusoe,” Studies in the Novel 35 (1): 1-21.

Week 7: October 20

Reading:

Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe (cont’d)

Carol Houlihan Flynn, “Consumptive Fictions: Cannibalism and Defoe” (in the Norton critical edition of Robinson Crusoe)

Week 8: October 27

Reading:

Alexander Pope, “Windsor Forest” ed. Jack Lynch

James Thomson, “Rule Britannia” in Alfred: A Masque. Represented before Their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales, at Cliffden (London, 1740), 42-3 (from ECCO)

*Suvir Kaul, “Introduction: Poetry, National Pride and the Call to Empire” in Poems of Nation, Anthems of Empire: English Verse in the Long Eighteenth Century

*Eric Hinderaker, The "Four Indian Kings" and the Imaginative Construction of the First British Empire,” William and Mary Quarterly 53:3 (1996), 487-526.

Week 9: November 3

Reading:

Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas

*Clement Hawes, “Johnson’s Immanent Critique of Imperial Nationalism” from The British Eighteenth Century and Global Critique (169-200)

Week 10: November 10

Reading:

Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano

*Srinivas Aravamudan, “Equiano and the Politics of Literacy” in Tropicopolitans: Colonialism and Agency, 1688-1804 (233-289).

*John Bugg, “The Other Interesting Narrative: Olaudah Equiano’s Public Book Tour,” PMLA 121:5 (2006), 1424-1442.

Week 11: November 17

proposal for essay and annotated bibliography (at least 7 items) due

Week 12: November 24

Reading:

Elizabeth Hamilton, Translations of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah

*Mona Narain, “Colonial Desires: The Fantasy of Empire and Elizabeth Hamilton’s Translations of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah,” Studies in Romanticism 45 (4): 585-98.

*Nigel Leask, “Elizabeth Hamilton’s Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah and Romantic Orientalism” in Repossessing the Romantic Past, ed. Heather Glen and Paul Hamilton (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006), 183-202.

Week 13: November 30

Wrap-up and conference presentations