New England and Empire: Junior Colloquium
AMST 206
Fall 2021 not offered
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| Course Cluster and Certificates: Caribbean Studies Minor |
Using history and literature, this Junior Colloquium focuses on the role of New England in the transformation of the United States from colony to world power. Major forces effecting this metamorphosis have their roots in this area. Mercantile entrepreneurship and the drive of commerce and trade, such as the slave trade, the ivory trade, and the West and East Indies (China and India) trades, opened the larger world to merchants and consumers in New England. Discourses of race, religion, civilization, and science created universities, produced missionaries and merchants, explorers and colonizers, writers and artists who went to the far corners of the world--the Caribbean, Hawaii, China, and Japan--and brought the world back home. The vaunted mechanical and technological ingenuity of the Yankee peddler, seen in a grandiose version in the eponymous inventor of the famous Colt revolver, backed territorial expansion and insinuated New England culture in to those newly acquired territories. A developing sense of racial entitlement and racial confidence legitimated expansion--into Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines--and produced military and cultural imperialism. The domestic, woman-centered "parlor" culture of New England both displayed the wealth of empire and hid its existence. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA AMST |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (CBST-MN) |
Major Readings:
Subject to modification; Wesleyan/R.J. Julia Bookstore should be consulted for final list:
Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America
Emerson W. Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Herman Melville, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life
John R. Haddad, America's First Adventure in China
Pamela Haag, The Gunning of America
Craig Wilder, Ebony and Ivy
Henry James, Daisy Miller
Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
William Lederer and Eugene Burdick, The Ugly American
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Examinations and Assignments:
Two essays, midterm and final exam. One in-class oral presentation. Faithful attendance and engaged, prepared participation in class discussion. |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
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