The Atlantic World: Literature and Theatre, 1726-Present

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

The transatlantic slave trade transformed the society, culture, economics, and politics of the early modern world; the disbursement of peoples of African descent during this period continues to impact the world that we live in today. In this course we will explore the formation of an "Atlantic World," by focusing on literature and theatre from the eighteenth-century to the present. Positioning the Atlantic Ocean as a conduit of exchange between the Old World and the colonized New World, the art of our focus will allow us to examine the results of these exchanges. While our initial focus will center on the creation of the Black Atlantic, our discussions and texts will include work written by indigenous peoples and diasporic Europeans, as well as diasporic Africans. Texts will include: Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Boucicault's The Octoroon, Shipp's Dahomey, Walcott's Sea at Dauphin, McCann's TransAtlantic, Gilroy's The Black Atlantic, Dillon's New World Drama: The Performative Commons in the Atlantic World, 1649-1849, and Roach's Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance.