Research questions

If we are to develop a genuinely comparative literary history, then what imaginative spaces best replace the nation states of conventional literary history?

What light can comparative and interdisciplinary investigation cast on the study of the history of American literature (understood in a continental sense)?

What are the benefits a literary history focussed on place, rather than on nation and writer?  What would such histories look like?

These questions will be addressed and answered through an application of the research methods outlined below.

Research context

Increased attention to the phenomena of transculturation and diaspora, of which the extended Caribbean provides the leading example, have brought into question the feasibility of literary histories based on nation states or single languages.  At the same time the development of the discipline of cultural geography has encouraged more sophisticated analyses of notions of space and place, which this project will bring to bear on its materials.

Relevant research in this general area includes attempts to transcend traditional divisions between the Anglophone and Latin American traditions, as in Border Studies and Atlantic Studies; the inauguration of journals such as Comparative American Studies; and at institutional level the establishment in London of the Institute for the Study of the Americas.

Research methods

The project’s fundamental research methods are as traditional as its research questions are radical: archival research; thinking otherwise; reading extensively; discussion and testing of preliminary ideas first informally and then through conferences.

For a literary history based on place archival research is of particular importance.  Imaginative projections of place matter, but writers often visited or resided in the places under study, and their traces need to be followed.  All six participants (the three named researchers, the postdoctoral research assistant, and two PhD students) will spend six weeks undertaking archival research.

Thinking otherwise and reading extensively are basic when trying to shift the paradigms of literary-historical thinking.  They are therefore at the heart of this project, with the time for that thinking and reading supplied by contracted research time plus periods of sabbatical leave.

Discussion and testing of ideas first happens informally through the local research community established by the first circle of those involved in the project (six in this case), and the second circle of those whose research interests overlap with the project.  At Essex we have a group of researchers whose interdisciplinary interests have been nurtured over the years by Latin American Studies and United States Studies seminars.

Local Essex seminars will provide a testing-ground for ideas and research.  The second stage will be provided by national conferences.  The third stage will be a two-day national colloquium (April 2008) to bring together other British-based scholars working on similar or analogous projects.  The final stage will be a three-day international conference (July 2009) to bring together Essex, British, and international scholars to explore further the project’s themes and to broaden still further its geographical remit.