Writing Race Across The Atlantic World

Writing Race Across the Atlantic World, Medieval to Modern comprises a set of lively, diverse, and original investigations into contemporary notions of race in the oceanic interculture of the Atlantic during the early modern period. Working across institutional boundaries of “American” and “British” literature in this period, as well as between “history” and “literature,” ten essays address the ways in which cultural categories of “race”—brown, red, and white, African-American and Afro-Caribbean, Spanish and Jewish, English and Celtic, native American and northern European, creole and mestizo—were constructed and adapted by early modern writers.

This collection of original essays explores the origins of contemporary notions of race in the oceanic interculture of the Atlantic world in the early modern period. In doing so, it breaks down institutional boundaries between 'American' and 'British' literature in this early period, as well as between 'history' and 'literature'. Individual essays address the ways in which categories of 'race' - black brown, red and white, African American and Afro-Caribbean, Spanish and Jewish, English and Celtic, native American and Northern European, creole and mestizo - were constructed or adapted by early modern writers. The collection brings together a top collection of historians and literary critics specializing in early modern Britain and early America.

This collection of original essays explores the origins of contemporary notions of race in the oceanic interculture of the Atlantic world in the early modern period. In doing so, it breaks down institutional boundaries between 'American' and 'British' literature in this early period, as well as between 'history' and 'literature'. Individual essays address the ways in which categories of 'race' - black brown, red and white, African American and Afro-Caribbean, Spanish and Jewish, English and Celtic, native American and Northern European, creole and mestizo - were constructed or adapted by early modern writers. The collection brings together a top collection of historians and literary critics specializing in early modern Britain and early America.

Through a thoughtful consideration of the complexity of the religious landscape of the Atlantic basin, the collection provides an enriching portrayal of the intriguing interplay between religion, gender, ethnicity, and authority in the early modern Atlantic world.

Drawing on texts written by and about European and Euro-American captives in a variety of languages and genres, Lisa Voigt explores the role of captivity in the production of knowledge, identity, and authority in the early modern imperial world. The practice of captivity attests to the violence that infused relations between peoples of different faiths and cultures in an age of extraordinary religious divisiveness and imperial ambitions. But as Voigt demonstrates, tales of Christian captives among Muslims, Amerindians, and hostile European nations were not only exploited in order to emphasize cultural oppositions and geopolitical hostilities. Voigt's examination of Spanish, Portuguese, and English texts reveals another early modern discourse about captivity--one that valorized the knowledge and mediating abilities acquired by captives through cross-cultural experience. Voigt demonstrates how the flexible identities of captives complicate clear-cut national, colonial, and religious distinctions. Using fictional and nonfictional, canonical and little-known works about captivity in Europe, North Africa, and the Americas, Voigt exposes the circulation of texts, discourses, and peoples across cultural borders and in both directions across the Atlantic.

Theorising the Ibero-American Atlantic offers fresh and challenging perspectives on the Atlantic turn in Hispanic and Latin American studies. Contributors, while mindful of its limits, explore and establish the viability and value of the Ibero-American Atlantic as a framework of enquiry.

Debates about the ‘Black Atlantic’ have alerted us to an experience of modernization that diverges from the dominant Western narratives of globalization and technological progress. This outstanding volume expands the concept of the Black Atlantic by reaching beyond the usual African-American focus of the field, presenting fresh perspectives on postcolonial experiences of technology and modernization. A team of renowned contributors come together in this volume in order to: redefine and expand ideas of Black Atlantic challenge unified concepts of modernization from a postcolonial perspective question fashionable concepts of the transnational by returning to the local and the national offer new approaches to cross-cultural mechanisms of exchange explore utopian uses of technology in the postcolonial sphere. Exploring a variety of national, diasporan and transnational counternarratives to Western modernization, Beyond the Black Atlantic makes a valuable contribution to the fields of postcolonial, literary and cultural studies.

Envisioning Others offers a multidisciplinary view of the relationship between race and visual culture in the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world, from the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal to colonial Peru and Colombia, post-Independence Mexico, and the pre-Emancipation United States.