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Clash of Civilizations in the Early Republic (HS)- Lecturer
- Prof. Dr. Andrew Gross
- Details
- Hauptseminar
2 cred.h
Gender und Diversity, Magister, Master, Bachelor, Sprache Englisch
Time and place: Wed 14:15 - 15:45, C 603; single appointment on 14.12.2012 14:00 - 16:00, C 603
- Prerequisites / Organisational information
- Das HS gehört in folgenden Studiengängen jeweils zu folgenden
Modulen:
MA Literaturstudien – intermedial und interkulturell: Module 4,5,7 und 8 MA North American Studies - Culture and Literature: Aufbaumodul Literary oder Cultural Studies BA English and American Studies: Hauptmodul A Literature oder Culture (Zulassungsvoraussetzung: Zwischenmodul II)
Für BA-Studierende ist an diesen Kurs auch eine "Independent Study Group" angeschlossen.
Lehramt Englisch an Gymnasien (neu): Hauptmodul L-GYM Literature (Zulassungsvoraussetzung: Zwischenmodul Literature) Alte Studiengänge (Studienbeginn vor WS 07/08): Hauptstudium (Zulassungsvoraussetzung: Zwischenprüfung)
- Contents
- This course will explore some of the numerous accounts of Barbary piracy and white slavery, fictional and non-fictional, written after the Revolutionary War. Barbary captivity narratives were a popular and diverse genre first appearing in the seventeenth century, simultaneously with Indian captivity narratives, and reaching the peak of their popularity in the middle of the nineteenth century, when slave narratives were also widely circulated and read. All three genres survived in popular forms well into the twentieth century, and they are linked not only chronologically, but in style and concerns. Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Sewall (The Selling of Joseph, 1700), and Charles Sumner (White Slavery in the Barbary States, 1853), were among the most prominent figures to explore the abolitionist potential of Barbary captivity narratives. They sought to imprecate the American (or British) enslavement of Africans by depicting the horrors of the North African enslavement of Americans. The narratives that we will discuss develop this cross cultural analogy, but they go beyond moral condemnation and domestic critique to pursue an ethnographic or anthropological line of inquiry they have in common with other travel narratives of the time. This step beyond domestic analogy has to do with the fact that American Barbary captives were sailors and adventurers, in contrast to slaves in the Americas who were born in captivity or kidnapped from their native lands. These adventurers encountered other cultures and religions from a position of absolute but temporary subordination; they were among the returnees, or fictionally embellished the testimonials of returnees for an audience of their compatriots. These compatriots had views of Islam and North Africa that were colored by what we have come to call “orientalism,” a set of preconceptions about cultural, religious, and political difference, in which arguments about barbarism (probably implicit in the etymology of Barbary) and civilization reinforce but are not identical to arguments about race. The Barbary captivity narratives, fictional and non-fictional, thus offer an early example of what many today call the “clash of civilizations.”
To the cultural and symbolic issues involved in this clash must be added early concerns about foreign and domestic politics. The Algerian captive dilemma was perhaps the most severe diplomatic crisis faced by the new republic—one that eventually resulted in the founding of the U.S. Navy and the first post-revolutionary victory in the Tripoli War (1801-05). The Barbary captivity narratives reveal the weakness, moral hypocrisy, and inexperience of the new nation (often deliberately), but they are also a vehicle through which the United States emerges as an international force.
- Recommended literature
- Royall Tyler, The Algerine Captive (novel)
Charles Burr Todd, Life and Letters of Joel Barlow: Poet, Statesman, Philosopher, Ch. VI, 115-150, (biography, copies will be provided);
and "Barlow’s “Advice to a Raven in Russia” (poem, copies to be provided)
Peter Markoe, The Algerine Spy in Pennsylvania (novel)
Susanna Rowson, Slaves in Algiers (drama)
Paul Baepler,White Slaves, African Masters (anthology)
- Additional information
- Registration is required for this lecture.
Die Registration via: CASSY Erlangen
- Verwendung in folgenden UnivIS-Modulen
- Startsemester WS 2012/2013:
- Amerikanistik, Modul 9
- Amerikanistik, Modul C
- Department: Lehrstuhl für Amerikanistik, insbesondere Literaturwissenschaft (Prof. Dr. Kley)
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