Paradigms of American Literature: Americans Abroad: History, Fiction, Travel Writing - Detailseite

How do American authors perceive the world “outside” the nation?  How do they define the role of the USA in a global setting? How do they imagine the interaction with people outside “their” nation? In what way have patterns of self-perception and of the perception of cultural (and “racial”) Otherness persisted over history, in what way have they changed? The seminar will examine such questions by analysing the literary discourse on Americans abroad.

                During the first centuries of transatlantic history European descriptions of America dominated transatlantic literary discourse (mostly in travel reports); by the early 19^th century, however, an increasing number of Americans, including “professional” writers, such as Washington Irving and Mark Twain, published accounts of their journeys in Europe and other parts of the globe, as well as fiction about “Americans abroad.” Since the late 19^th century, many non-fictional and fictional accounts of American travellers and expatriates have contributed to forming the American cultural imaginary. In the 20^th and 21^st century many American authors have written fiction and non-fiction about Americans living or travelling in different regions of the globe. These texts provide an exploration of strategies of identification (e.g. in terms of national belonging), but also of psychological issues, such as the feeling of alienation; they also provide literary explorations of place, difference, and conflictual history.

In the seminar we will read travel reports, short fiction and novels in the context of transatlantic and inter-American history. We will also discuss “theoretical” issues relevant for a critical reading of texts on and by Americans abroad, such as “cultural contact”, “colonialism”, “postcolonialism”, “national identity”, “Orientalism”, the “Black Atlantic”, gendered genre conventions. Among the texts we are going to read: Excerpts of early travel reports of Westward expansion (e.g. John Filson, Zebulon Pike); Herman Melville “Benito Cereno”; Mark Twain Innocents Abroad (excerpt); Henry James Daisy Miller; Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas; Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises; James Baldwin Giovanni’s Room; Paul Theroux The Old Patagonian Express; Jonathan Safran Foer Everything is Illuminated.