Overview

When exploring the links between America and postcolonialism, scholars tend to think either in terms of contemporary multiculturalism, or of imperialism since 1898. This narrow view has left more than the two prior centuries of colonizing literary and political culture unexamined. Messy Beginnings challenges the idea of early America's immunity from issues of imperialism, that its history is not as ""clean"" as European colonialism. By addressing the literature ranging from the diaries of American women missionaries in the Middle East to the work of Benjamin Franklin and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and through appraisals of key postcolonial theorists such as Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and Homi Bhabha, the contributors to this volume explore the applicability of their models to early American culture. Messy Beginnings argues against the simple concept that the colonization of what became the United States was a confrontation between European culture and the ""other."" Contributors examine the formation of America through the messy or unstable negotiations of the idea of ""nation."" The essays forcefully show that the development of ""Americanness"" was a raced and classed phenomenon, achieved th

Full Product Details

Author:   Malini Johar Schueller ,  Edward Watts ,  Gayle Brandow Samuels ,  Michael Drexler
Publisher:   Rutgers University Press
Imprint:   Rutgers University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.80cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.399kg
ISBN:  

9780813532332

ISBN 10:   0813532337
Pages:   280
Publication Date:   11 April 2003
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock  
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Table of Contents

"Making a joyful noise: William Apess and the search for postcolonial method(ism) / Laura Donaldson Seeing with Ezekeil's eyes: Indian ""resurrection"" in transatlantic colonial writings / Kristina Bross Casualties of the rod: rebelling children, disciplining Indians, and the critique of colonial authority in Puritan New England / Anna Mae Duane ""If Indians can have treaties, why cannot we have one too?"": the whiskey rebellion and the colonization of the West / Edward Watts Colonial planter to American farmer: South, nation, and decolonization in Crèvecoeur / Jennifer Rae Greeson Hawthorne's desert: ""wakefield"" and the imagination of colonial space / Geoffrey Sanborn The periphery within: internal colonialism and the rhetoric of U.S. nation building / Michelle Burnham Nation, missionary women, and the race of true womanhood / Malini Johar Schueller Brigands and nuns: the vernacular sociology of collectivity after the Haitian revolution / Michael Drexler Turning identity upside down: Benjamin Franklin's antipodean cosmopolitanism / Jim Egan ""The science of lying"" / David S. Shields Colonization, Black freemasonry, and the rehabilitation of Africa / Joanna Brooks"

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Author Information

Malini Johar Schueller is a professor of English at the University of Florida and author of US Orientalism: Race, Nation, and Gender in Literature, 1790-1890. Edward Watts is an associate professor of American thought and language at Michigan State University and author of An American Colony: Regionalism and the Roots of Midwestern Culture. 

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