American Travel and Empire

In this volume, leading scholars examine the interfaces between narratives of travel and empire. Including both writing about America by visitors and the travel writing of Americans abroad, this collection explores the ways in which descriptions of the landscapes and peoples of colonized areas shaped our perceptions, as well as other issues related to the American empire, such as the transmission of images and metaphor between colony and metropolis, the portrayal of cultures as primitive or wild, the cultural and economic hegemony underlying American and European travel writing, and the deployment of cultural encounters to reinforce sovereign cultural practices.