American Travel and Empire
Distributed for Liverpool University Press
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.
“From the writings of French and English visitors to the New World to those of Americans recounting their experiences in locations as diverse as Cuba, China, and urban Britain, the authors consider at length the relation between travel and appropriation, discovery and creation, and national identity and difference. A refreshing, engaging volume that raises as many questions as it answers, this book deserves the time and attention of readers in many disciplines.”—Choice
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
1 What Are We Doing Here? Scenarios for Early English Colonies in North America
Donald Ross
2 ‘The Lies of a Distant Traveller’? The Travel Writing of Louis de Hennepin
Susan Castillo
3 French Representations of Niagara: From Hennepin to Butor
Charles Forsdick
4 ‘Come to these Arcadian Regions where there is Room for Millions’: Citizen Imlay and the Empire in the West
Wil Verhoeven
5 The Conquest of Antiquity: The Travelling Empire of John Lloyd Stephens
Gesa Mackenthun
6 ‘A Confusion of Unwashed and Shabbily Dressed People’: Nineteenth-Century Americans and Urban Britain
Shirley Foster
7 Sunny Tropic Scenes: US Travel Writers in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba
Peter Hulme
8 Henry James and the ‘Swelling Act of the Imperial Theme’
Peter Rawlings
9 The Pacifist Traveller: Kate Crane-Gartz
Tim Youngs
10 American Ambassadors: Travellers in the Cold War
David Seed
11 In the Missionary Position: Emily Prager in China
Judie Newman
Bibliography
Index
Travel and Tourism: Travel Writing and Guides
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