Overview
The biggest challenge of the twenty-first century is to bring the effects of public life into relation with the intractable problem of global atmospheric change. Climate and the Picturesque in the American Tropics explains how we came to think of the climate as something abstract and remote rather than a force that actively shapes our existence. The book argues that this separation between climate and sensibility predates the rise of modern climatology and has deep roots in the era of colonial expansion, when the American tropics were transformed into the economic supplier for Euro-American empires. The book shows how the writings of American travellers in the Caribbean registered and pushed forward this new understanding of the climate in a pivotal period in modern history, roughly between 1770 and 1860, which was fraught with debates over slavery, environmental destruction, and colonialism. Offering novel readings of authors including J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Leonora Sansay, William Cullen Bryant, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sophia Peabody, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and James McCune Smith in light of their engagements with the American tropics, this book shows that these authors drew on a climatic epistemology that fused science and sentiment in ways that citizen science is aspiring to do today. By suggesting a new genealogy of modern climate thinking, Climate and the Picturesque in the American Tropics thus highlights the urgency of revisiting received ideas of tropicality deeply ingrained in American culture that continue to inform current debates on climate debt and justice.
Full Product Details
Author: Michael Boyden (Professor of English, Professor of English, Radboud University Nijmegen)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 16.20cm
, Height: 1.00cm
, Length: 24.10cm
Weight: 0.498kg
ISBN: 9780192868305
ISBN 10: 0192868306
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 29 November 2022
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Reviews
Theoretically rigorous and rich with textual analysis, Climate and the Picturesque in the American Tropics asks us to fundamentally reassess the way we talk about climate. Indeed, the book shows that this seemingly free-floating, neutral concept is steeped in a lesser-known colonial history. * Abby Goode, Early American Literature *
Author Information
Michael Boyden is Chair Professor of English at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, where he has worked since 2021. Prior to his appointment at Radboud University he was an associate professor of American literature at Uppsala University, Sweden, and, before that, an assistant professor at Ghent University, Belgium. He obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Leuven, Belgium, in 2006. He has been a Fulbright scholar at Harvard University and held visiting positions at Dartmouth College and Brigham Young University.
