English 3840:  Transatlantic Journeys 1800-1910
Keirstead
Spring 2003

Course Description
In this course we will examine the diverse body of travel literature produced by writers from Great Britain and the United States as they explored, critiqued, and, in some cases, emigrated to each other’s countries during the period 1800 to 1910. Readings are drawn from across genres and include works by well-known figures such as Charles Dickens and Mark Twain as well as more obscure travel accounts found in letters and journals. We will also explore the importance of continental Europe–the Grand Tour–as a destination for both Britons and Americans. Some of the questions that will inform our analysis include: What motivates one to travel in the first place? What is worth seeing? How do travelers attempt to "authorize" their accounts? How did the invention of the railroad, steamship and, eventually, the automobile change the way people thought and wrote about travel? How does travel both define and disrupt national identity? What does it mean that some of the most celebrated and popular travel writers of the period were women? How did British writers respond to slavery, the Civil War, and other conflicts in the United States? What did they say about Alabama? Conversely, how did Americans define their relationship with Great Britain, the former "mother country" and only global superpower for much of the nineteenth-century?

Course Objectives
In addition to exploring the cultural and literary issues noted above, we will also develop specific strategies for interpreting prose travel writing, an under-represented and thus mostly unfamiliar genre to students of literature. We will also examine how the choice of genre–whether poetry, novel, or essay–affects the presentation of the people and places described in a particular travel account.