Prerequisites: the instructor’s permission. (Seminar). This course examines how European exposure to Africa and the Americas influenced transatlantic literature from Columbus to Aphra Behn, asking how art and texts from all three continents reflected, responded to, and shaped the contact zones created by early modern expansion. Topics include the creation of geographic identities and selves; visual versus verbal representations of ‘savages’; gender and sexuality at home and abroad; old genres and new technologies; utopian communities; travel for pleasure, profit, and pain. Authors include More, Milton, Montaigne, Donne, Guaman Poma, Shakespeare, Sor Juana de la Cruz, & the Basque trans ex-nun, Catalina de Erauso. All texts available in the original and in translation.
The Heyman Center for the Humanities, Room B-101
74 Morningside Drive
New York, NY, 10027
(212) 854-4541
(212) 854-3099
