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Download ENGL 5720 Literature and Science: Enlightenment and Environment
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ENGL 5720 Literature and Science: Enlightenment and Environment in America The exploration and discovery of America has traditionally been viewed as a key point in the “Scientific Revolution”: the shift away from privileging classical philosophies to empirical information and evidence. For example, cartographers redesigned their maps of the world to include the “fourth continent” and natural historians created curiosity cabinets in order to hold the amazing plants and animals sent back to Europe from the Americas. America itself became an object of scientific inquiry, as European and colonial writers debated the effects of the New World environment on unfamiliar bodies, the origins of Native Americans, and the cause of cultural differences among European colonists, Native Americans, and Africans. Claiming Enlightenment ideals of objectivity and rationality, natural philosophers in Europe argued for a separation between matter and spirit, and they distanced themselves from the natural phenomenon they studied. However, people in the Americas could not accomplish this shift. Instead, colonists, Native Americans, and Africans were defined as part of the natural phenomenon that philosophers observed, and they were seen as compromised by their proximity to the American environment. At the same time, however, the Americas might be said to embody other Enlightenment ideals, for Euro-American colonists and enslaved Africans claimed natural rights through revolution. This course will examine the Enlightenment in the early Americans from transatlantic, hemispheric, and intercultural perspectives, in order to examine the scientific exchanges and debates in which Europeans, Native Americans, Africans, and British American colonists engaged. We will examine the meanings of the term “Enlightenment,” before considering 1) whether the term can be applied to the Americas and 2) whether the term has continued utility. Focusing on a series of rebellions and revolutions—from the “Scientific Revolution” and Bacon’s Rebellion to the American and Haitian Revolutions and various revolts by enslaved Africans—we will examine how people in the Americas countered their position as objects of a European scientific gaze. Tentative Reading List The Scientific Revolution Selections from Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society Hans Sloane, A VOYAGE To the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers AND JAMAICA Jonathan Edwards, Personal Narrative William Bartram, Travels Through North & South Carolina and Images by Mark Catesby Readings from Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader Bacon’s Rebellion Aphra Behn, The Widdow Ranter; or The History of Bacon in Virginia Writings on Bacon’s Rebellion: James Revel, The Poor Unhappy Transported Felon’s Sorrowful Account of his Fourteen Years Transportation at Virginia in America; William Moraley, The Infortunate: The Voyage and Adventures of William Moraley, an Indentured Servant (North) American Revolutions Phillis Wheatley, Poems Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography; writings on electricity Thomas Paine, Common Sense Abbé Raynal, History of the Two Indies Charles Brockden Brown, “Somnambulism”; Edgar Huntly “Unthinkable” Revolutions Toussaint Louverture, Memoir of Toussaint Louverture, Written by Himself William Earle, Obi; or the History of Three-Fingered Jack Readings from Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking World of the Eighteenth Century Haitian Constitution (various editions) Frederick Douglass, “Lecture on Haiti” Secondary Texts Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England James Delbourgo, A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders: Electricity and Enlightenment in Early America David Scott, Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment Susan Scott Parrish, American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World Ian Baucom, Specters of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of History Philip Gould, Barbaric Traffic: Commerce and Antislavery in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World Roxann Wheeler, The Complexion of Race: Categories of Difference in Eighteenth-Century British Culture Thomas Hallock, From the Fallen Tree: Frontier Narratives, Environmental Politics, and the Roots of a National Pastoral Martin Brückner, The Geographic Revolution in Early America: Maps, Literacy, and National Identity Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World Joan Dayan, Haiti, History and the Gods
