Literatures of the Sea

Catalog description

While the ocean has often been represented as an alibi for the development of British maritime empire, it has also recently been read as a critical resource for postcolonial writers such as Csaire, Danticat, and Walcott for re-evaluating the effects of colonial history and expanding our sense of a shared planet. This course examines the long, complicated, and imbricated histories of the ocean and imperialism through the literatures and travelogues of the nineteenth century and beyond. What conception of planetarity can be gleaned from such literatures of the sea; what alternate history (and indeed, natural history) can be derived from the study of mans relationship to the sea?