Victorian Internationalism
ENGL537
Lauren Goodlad
Victorianists (among others) have begun to recognize literary texts and other nineteenth-century cultural materials as sites of transnational encounter. Scholars of the period have moved beyond the limitations of a strictly “British” framework to consider the various border-crossing dynamics of empire, trade, immigration, and diaspora. Such innovative critical projects must, however, be attentive to Victorian conceptions of nationalism, internationalism and cosmopolitanism as well as to the historical relation between nineteenth-century liberal imperialism and the globalized modernity of our own day. This seminar will approach these topics from the vantage of four key border-crossing imaginaries: tropicalization, inter-nationalism, imperial encounter, and cosmopolitanism. We will read six groundbreaking Victorian novels: Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Villette, Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White and The Moonstone, Anthony Trollope’s The Eustace Diamonds, and George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda. The accompanying critical readings, drawn from various disciplines, aim to exemplify how the work of literary and cultural historicization bears on current understandings nationalism, internationalism, sovereignty, transnationalism, post-nationalism, post-coloniality, and alternative modernities. Key readings include selections from Amanda Anderson, Benedict Anderson, Arjun Appadurai, Srinivas Aravamudan, Tim Brennan, Jim Buzard, Paul Gilroy, Catherine Hall, Neil Lazarus, Sharon Marcus, and Bruce Robbins. Robbins, who will be visiting our campus as a Mellon Distinguished Fellow in Spring 2006, will be a guest participant at one or two of our meetings.
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