ENGL 3092 - Transatlantic Literature (Mabee)

Student descriptions
Benedict writes about the coming of nationalism and what developments help aid the nationalist influence grow. Benedict argues that culture and psychology play major roles in the existence of nationalism. These two overarching themes connect language and
religion to the expansion and acceptance of nationalism. This source is valuable because it will give information towards the motives and reason for actions taken in the name of nationalism. I hope to find some sort of bigger meaning to the motive of the “greater good”.

Student description
The argument of this book addresses the problematic ways slavery is represented within the literary, cultural, and political discourses in Britain and America from the late seventeenth century to present.

This novel is about different people writing about Aphra Behn’s work and how she depicts slavery in Oroonoko. They also touch upon issues within how slavery is represented in Britain and America from the late seventeenth century to present. It goes through a lot of literature in where the writings could be problematic. This would be a valuable source to use if you are going to take a stance on how Aphra Behn represents slavery or the way she writes about black people in Oroonoko.

The author explores the experiences of black people in terms of abstract modernity and their sense of embeddedness in in the modern world. Some of the topics discussed in each chapter are the failure of national paradigms when confronted by the Black Atlantic (intercultural formation), the absence of a concern with “race” from most contemporary writings about modernity, and historical commentary on the ideas of ethnic authenticity.

I think this book would be a valuable source for any of my classmates that are focusing on double consciousness in The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, since it focuses on how blacks are guided to think in societal modernity and how they actually perceive themselves. In particular, Gilroy discusses double consciousness in terms of being African in a European society, which is the exact case of Equiano. The book also has a chapter dedicated to DuBois, whose book is mentioned in the PowerPoint on blackboard and elaborately defines double consciousness regarding Equiano’s dual identity.

The book I chose for my research project is The Slave Rebellion in Brazil by Joao Jose Reis. I wanted to do my research project on slave revolts in the Caribbean and South America and this book covers a slave rebellion In the Brazilian state of Bahia in 1835. From what I’ve seen the book covers the actual battle of Bahia as well as how the revolt was suppressed by the Brazilian government. The book also touches upon the religious aspects of the uprising as Islam played a large role in inspiring the slaves to rebel.

For today's assignment I chose the book The Slave Ship A Human History by Marcus Rediker. The novel its self is about the quality of life, the structure of ships, the captains, and the slaves, that where involved in the slave trade. The authors focus or thesis is to inform the reader on the horrors of the slave ships used during the slave trade, along with the conditions that the slaves endured.
I believe this novel would be good for anyone, like myself who is focusing primarily on the history of slave ships and how slaves where treated on them alongside how their quality of life was on board.

The book, "Daniel Defoe and Middle-Class Gentility", examines "the theme of middle class gentility and its significance in Defoe's life, works, and age." This book explores the socioeconomic standing of the time that Defoe was most active and discusses how this has undoubtedly effected his works.

The book I decided to find and explore is Daniel Defoe and the Nature of Man by Maximillian E. Novak. For my research assignment, I wanted to plan on diving deeper into Robinson Crusoe and looking into some of the gender role themes played out in the novel. Since this text was written many years ago, times have changed and many of these stereotypes truly do not exist anymore.
After skimming through the book, it appears as if its about different themes stressed throughout Defoe’s novels. It seems to talk about different techniques he uses in his novels and why he may talk about things in a specific way or what is behind his thinking. While looking at the book contents in the beginning, some of these topics include, “The Problem and Necessity in Defoe’s Fiction, Love, Marriage, and Natural Standards in Society, and Defore’s Psychology and Search for a Hero.” Regarding the author, it seems as if he is trying to help readers explain what is going on in Defoe’s mind throughout his novels. It is an interesting way to help understand what he is writing about and what you are reading.
I think this would be a valuable source for not only myself but for other classmates. If interested in Defoe and his novels (Robinson Crusoe in particular), it is interesting to see his writing in a different context. It may help explain some of the questions that readers have while reading one of his novels. It will be helpful to me because since I am hoping to learn more about gender roles in Robinson Crusoe This book will hopefully explain some of Defoe’s intentions.

Equiano the African by Vincent Carretta is an informational text that explores the story of his birth and early years. His origins are under debate as Carretta claims, “He was clearly willing to manipulate some details of his life” (3 Carretta). Carretta ultimately claims that according to naval and baptismal records, he was born in South Carolina around 1747. The early parts of the book discuss how the timing of publishing The Interesting Narrative of Equiano Ulaudah was no accident, as the the Abolition movement started to gain traction around this time. The book explores modern discoveries of his early life and how that possibly changes his perception.

For today's assignment, I chose the book "The Myth of Aunt Jemima - Representations of Race and Region" by Diane Roberts. Despite popular belief, this book is not about the history of syrup, but rather how white women write about race. It is also about how cultural representations of black women and white women have impacted our perceptions of gender and sexuality.

For why this book should be used as a reference, it has very good information on a critical issue that is the differences of gender and race. Additionally, starting on page 12, this book analyzes Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, a novel we are using in this class, and even for the project.

Conrad in the Nineteenth Century is a book in which Ian Watts makes his intentions clear from the first sentence. He says it is attempt to provide a comprehensive account of Conrad’s literally life. In this book Ian Watts shows how Conrad’s stand in relation to the multifarious literary currents of the late nineteenth century and what we still call the modern movement in literature. This source is useful due to the way that Ian Watt goes into details in all of his books. He uses critical thinking and it is objective in all of his critics.

Brief summary and explanation: This book is comprised of six different slave narratives and one of them is the slave narrative from Mary Prince. There is an introduction that is written by William L. Andrews with a foreword by Henry Louis Gates Jr. The book then goes into six slave narratives by six different enslaved women. Andrews talks in his introduction about how these slave narratives are important because they are coming from women of color who are given a space to voice and document the atrocities that they experienced during their enslavement. He states “Whether celebrating black female selfhood in general or the nurturing power of the slave mother in particular, women’s slave narratives first came into existence under the aegis of the abolitionist movement in England and the Americas” (Andrew, xxxi).
Why I think it will be useful: There were not a lot of options on the History of Mary Prince but when I found this book, I felt that it was a great use of primary source documents as there were five other narratives that were written by enslaved women of color. I want to focus my paper on women, though I am not sure what I want to focus specifically on yet, but I thought that this book as it is a book from The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers would be a very useful resource for me.

For today's assignment, I chose the novel The Atlantic Slave Trade by Herbert S Klein. After skimming through the text, Klein writes about how 17th and 18th century affects America, Europe and Africa, on economic, cultural, social and political levels. This book goes into how the slave trade also affects all these regions along with their relationships among st one another. The novel explains how the Slave Trade affected the world in the 17th and 18th century, and how it positively and negatively affects the world. Klein is giving insight on historical knowledge based on the information we have from those time periods, and then comparing them to explain how they all affected these different continents on different structural levels.
This book gives insight on a topic that in our class this semester, we have discussed on numerous occasions, which is slavery. This book does into how it affects different regions and either I, or another student in the class, could use this book as a reference in writing this research essay. It gives broad ideas and narrows it down to specific sections so many different parts of this book could apply to this project.

This text examines the representation of marginalized female voices. These characters have stimulated and disturbed readers in both their defiance and complacency in their situations. Emery asserts in her introduction that her intent is to direct attention to Jean Rhys’ works that illustrate life in the Caribbean and away from those that depict European life. This text also includes a timeline of Jean Rhys’ life which offers perspective into what may have inspired or driven certain publications by Rhys.

Although this book includes examinations of works by some other authors, the focus on Rhys would be very useful for anyone looking to research Wide Sargasso Sea. This book could also be useful for anyone looking to research any topics about women operating in marginalized spaces.

This is a collection of J.M. Coetzee’s essays on various subjects. We know Coetzee as the author of Foe, his postmodern novel that reworks and critiques Robinson Crusoe. I was intrigued to see what Coetzee, whose day job is Professor of General Literature at the University of Cape Town (i.e. he’s also an academic!), had to say in his essay on Crusoe, helpfully titled, “Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe” (20-26). This essay, which originally appeared as the introduction of the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Crusoe in 1999, centers on how the novel fits within the canon of European realist novels.

Within the opening paragraphs, Coetzee introduces the "Robinsonade" genre and mentions how this “pretended history” fit into Defoe’s authorial career as Defoe masqueraded as Crusoe himself, asserting in his Serious Reflections, how “‘the story, though allegorical, is also historical’” (20). Continuing his focus on Defoe’s place in the realist tradition, Coetzee notes that in Robinson Crusoe, “Defoe [tries] -- with incomplete success -- to bend the story of his adventurer hero to fit a scriptural pattern of disobedience, punishment, repentance, and (22) deliverance” (22-23). Coetzee earned my trust when he stated that Moll Flanders is a better novel than Crusoe.

Given how much Foe dismantled the mythos of Crusoe, I was pleasantly surprised to see the respect Coetzee showed Crusoe, ending on the note that, “Nothing [Defoe] set down on paper is less than intelligent” (26).

The book the Negotiated Empires is a collection of essays that portray the history of the spanish, portuguese, French, Dutch and British Atlantic empires. It opens the door to new understandings of the different empires. Also keying on on the empires themselves, it focuses and sheds light on the Americas as well throughout the time period explored within the book. It hits on a few major points in regards to the empires at home, abroad and most importantly it explores the Native Americans, African Americans as well in exploring the interactions between the groups which help to explain imperialism during this era.
This can be a valuable source for writing the effects of imperialism in on the countries and cultures that were affected due to to transatlantic slave trade as well as being oppressed by larger nations. Utilizing the essays in this book would allow new light and ideas to be shed on how things were conducted in that era and with that how the reaches of imperialism truly affected the natives in the differing countries that were affected by the system. Also requesting this book in reference to Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, one might be able to connect where the imperialist ideology prevalent throughout the text spanned from. Ultimately I believe it can be a valuable source because you can relate it to numerous countries as well as books that suffered under the imperialist rule of Europeans nations.

The collection of recollections of slavery, called Slave Narratives, is a collection of ten, mainly firsthand accounts of life in slavery, as well as accounts of escaped slaves. Among them is The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, and gives insight into how ingrained racism and slavery were in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I wanted to look at either gender or nationalism, however, it only touches on gender, and focuses more on the widespread racism slaves faced, especially escaped slaves.

This book is a collection of case studies and research that the editors have carefully chosen to show the division in human society regarding race, class, and gender using historical archaeology. They discuss the importance of history in shaping culture consciousness.
I think this book would be a good source for myself or a classmate for research because it holds a lot of exciting information. The text explores 17th-20th century colonial and post-colonial contexts from all around the world. It would allow people to explore ideas that are relevant to their research if they are incorporating race, class, or gender. And how material culture can shape those ideals.

In S.J. Wiseman’s literary work entitled Aphra Behn, the author discusses Behn’s ideas of female desire, politics and formal questions of narration. The book does not only focus on her work Oroonoko but anylizes her other poems, prose and plays that she has written. I feel that it is important to get an idea of her other works to better understand the book Oroonoko. Female desire was a big theme in the Oroonoko and it may be beneficial to further explore this concept. Politics are also super important in the story to understand why Behn wrote certain things. Behn being a minority for the time period she was alive in and a second class citizen she had to behave differently than white men.