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This lecture course attempts to capture the rich cultural diversity of North American Borderlands, those zones of inter- and transcultural interaction on the North American continent that are characterized by multidirectional flows of people, ideas, and products. The encounters of peoples who had never before been in contact with one another had momentous consequences not only for the Native inhabitants in North America, but also for the settler colonists and the natural environment. This lecture traces the clash of cultures in the Americas, spanning the years from Columbus’s voyage in 1492 to the publication of Gloria Anzaldúa’s groundbreaking book Borderlands/La Frontera (1987).
We will look at the writings of some of the early Spanish, French and English travelers to the “New World,” examining the process of representation and history: Do the accounts of Columbus, Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá, Cabeza de Vaca, Cortés, Jacques Cartier, Samuel de Champlain, George Vancouver, John Smith, John Winthrop, William Bradford, William Byrd, Sarah Kemble Knight, and others tell us more about the people and places they encountered or about their own cultures? To what extent were the Europeans in North America unwilling or unable to conceptually understand what lay before them? Apart from considering early sources, we will also look at recent borderlands texts that exhibit a transterritorial conception of space, such as the works of Thomas King or Karen Tei Yamashita.
Course Readings:
There will be a course reader, which you can pick up at the NamLitCult office. |
