Atlantic Studies - by William Boelhower (Hardcover)

About the Book

"In a work of critical reflection and innovation, William Boelhower examines the cultural shift represented by the new paradigm of Atlantic studies, a discipline that emerged equally from an older Atlantic history, defined by imperial traditions, and a newer, critical front of postcolonial and cultural studies. Divided into three sections, Atlantic Studies: Prospects and Challenges offers a critical survey of the field that also proposes new horizons for inquiry and critique. Part 1, "Concepts and Genealogy," analyzes the interdisciplinary methodologies that emerged to approach the Atlantic world in a larger, circum-Atlantic context, studying the exchanges of peoples and cultures instead of rigidly defined national and international boundaries. Part 2, "Case Studies across the Humanities," offers new readings of three well-known literary texts--Shakespeare's The Tempest, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and Frederick Douglass's "The Heroic Slave"--as exemplars of how an Atlantic studies perspective acknowledges spatial and cultural dimensions that disrupt the traditional scales of national literatures. Part 3, "The Cartographic Challenge," foregrounds the new expertise that went into the mapping of the Atlantic world as it emerged in the early modern period, focusing on maps drawn in the late 1400s and early 1500s, travel literature, and the genres of utopia and shipwreck. Boelhower argues for the importance of analyzing cartographic practices and strategies to understand how they shaped the visual and textual representations of the Atlantic world. Written by one of the founders of the discipline, Atlantic Studies: Prospects and Challenges offers both an accessible overview of the field and an engaging reflection on the challenges it faces going forward"--

Book Synopsis

In a work of critical reflection and innovation, William Boelhower examines the cultural shift represented by the new paradigm of Atlantic studies, a discipline forged from older models of Atlantic history, with their grounding in imperial traditions, and newer critical fronts that draw on insights from postcolonial and cultural studies occurring throughout the humanities. Atlantic Studies: Prospects and Challenges presents a critical survey of the field that also proposes new horizons for inquiry and critique.

The first section, "Prospects and Genealogy," analyzes the interdisciplinary methodologies that emerged to approach the Atlantic world in a larger, circumatlantic context, studying the exchanges of peoples and cultures instead of rigidly defined national and international boundaries. "Case Studies across the Humanities," the second section, offers new cross-disciplinary readings of three well-known literary texts--Shakespeare's The Tempest, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and Frederick Douglass's "The Heroic Slave"--as exemplars of how an Atlantic studies perspective acknowledges spatial and cultural dimensions that disrupt the traditional scales of national literatures. By foregrounding the challenges of interpreting nomadic and disenfranchised characters like Caliban, Hester Prynne, and Madison Washington, Boelhower models critical practices that embrace a multicentered, composite world marked by sudden shifts in perspective and scale. The final section, "The Cartographic Challenge," considers the new expertise that went into the mapping of the Atlantic Ocean and the rise of the Atlantic world as it emerged in the early modern period, focusing on three world maps produced by Europeans in the early sixteenth century, conceivably the most influential visual representations of the dawning Mundus Novus described by the likes of Columbus and Vespucci. Revealing how such maps inform discursive genres like travel literature, the utopia, and the shipwreck narrative, Boelhower argues for the importance of analyzing cartographic practices and strategies to understand how they shaped the visual and textual representations of the Atlantic world.

Written by one of the founders of the discipline, Atlantic Studies: Prospects and Challenges provides both an insightful overview of the field and an engaging reflection on the challenges it faces going forward.

Review Quotes

This book provides a timely and beautifully written genealogy and future vision for the Atlantic studies paradigm. Bringing together theories and methods from the fields of history, geography, and literary and cultural studies, William Boelhower calls for research on the Atlantic world that dares to be multidisciplinary, transnational, multilingual, and multiscalar.--Nicole Waller, author of "Contradictory Violence: Revolution and Subversion in the Caribbean"

William Boelhower gets right to the heart of what makes Atlantic studies vital to contemporary critical thought, but also cogently lays out the challenges facing those who would first dip their feet into its breaking waves. As capacious as it is complex, Atlantic studies is fortunate to have Boelhower as a guide.--Michael J. Drexler, coeditor of "The Haitian Revolution and the Early United States: Histories, Textualities, Geographies"

William Boelhower has done as much as anyone to create the dynamic interdisciplinary field called Atlantic studies. This provocative set of essays reveals how and, even more intriguingly, why.--Marcus Rediker, author of "The Slave Ship: A Human History"

Atlantic Studies carefully pins down the theoretical assumptions and methodological differences that often divide scholars from different humanities fields working in Atlantic studies. This book is an exciting contribution to the field that Boelhower helped found.--Vera M. Kutzinski, Martha Rivers Ingram Professor of English, Vanderbilt University

With brilliance and brio, William Boelhower provides the emergent field of Atlantic studies with the prospectus that it has been waiting for. Arguing for trialectical engagements of history, geography, and literary studies, with trans-, cis-, and circumatlantic soundings and groundings, he maps current positions and plots future directions. No better guide could be hoped for.--Kent Mathewson, Fred B. Kniffen Professor of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University

About the Author

William Boelhower is the Robert Thomas and Rita Wetta Adams Professor of Atlantic and Ethnic Studies Emeritus at Louisiana State University. He is the author, editor, or translator of many books, including Through a Glass Darkly: Ethnic Semiosis in American Literature and New Orleans in the Atlantic World: Between Land and Sea. He cofounded the scholarly journal Atlantic Studies and coedited it from 2004 to 2014.