Ethnology and Empire: Languages, Literature, and the Making of the North American Borderlands

Robert Lawrence Gunn

Open Access Published by New York University Press 2015

Ethnology and Empire

Languages, Literature, and the Making of the North American Borderlands

Robert Lawrence Gunn

Volume 6 in the series America and the Long 19th Century

https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479842582.001.0001

Overview
Contents

About this book

Winner, The Early American Literature Book Prize

Ethnology and Empire tells stories about words and ideas, and ideas about
words that developed in concert with shifting conceptions about Native peoples
and western spaces in the nineteenth-century United States. Contextualizing the
emergence of Native American linguistics as both a professionalized research
discipline and as popular literary concern of American culture prior to the
U.S.-Mexico War, Robert Lawrence Gunn reveals the manner in
which relays between the developing research practices of ethnology, works of
fiction, autobiography, travel narratives, Native oratory, and sign languages
gave imaginative shape to imperial activity in the western borderlands.

In literary and
performative settings that range from the U.S./Mexico borderlands to the Great
Lakes region of Tecumseh’s Pan-Indian Confederacy and the hallowed halls of
learned societies in New York and Philadelphia, Ethnology and Empire models
an interdisciplinary approach to networks of peoples, spaces, and communication
practices that transformed the boundaries of U.S. empire through a
transnational and scientific archive. Emphasizing the culturally transformative
impacts western expansionism and Indian Removal, Ethnology and Empire reimagines
U.S. literary and cultural production for future conceptions of hemispheric
American literatures.

Author / Editor information

Gunn Robert Lawrence :

Robert Lawrence Gunn is Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Reviews

Robert David Aguirre,author of Informal Empire: Mexico and Central America in Victorian Culture:
Through masterful engagement with nineteenth century literary production and ethnology, Robert Gunn underscores how the cultural work of linguistic contact is vital to our understanding of the ideologies of empire that slowly gained force in the evolving U.S. nation-state.Ethnology and Empiremakes a significant contribution in the hemispheric turn in American studies, threading together little-known histories that advance the field and push our thinking about borderlands in innovative ways.

Kirsten Silva Gruesz,author of Ambassadors of Culture: The Transamerican Origins of Latino Writing:
An original, beautifully written book on the rapidly changing ideas about language in American culture during the early nineteenth century. Ethnology and Empireengages the social history of the borderlands and linguistics to introduce a new way of looking at the formation of ideas about race and ethnography in the antebellum period. A fascinating read.

Ethnology and Empire demonstrates the power and flexibility of postmodern approaches to the study of colonial relationships.

A superb work. Summing Up: Highly recommended.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Philologies of Race: Ethnological Linguistics and Novelistic Representation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	17
2. Empire, Sign Languages, and the Long Expedition, 1819–1821 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	52
3. John Dunn Hunter, Tecumseh, and the Linguistic Politics of Pan-Indianism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	83
4. Connecting Borderlands: Native Networks and the Fredonian Rebellion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	114
5. John Russell Bartlett’s Literary Borderlands: Ethnology, the U.S-Mexico War, and the United States Boundary Survey Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
Indian Passports Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	177
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	187
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	229
About the Author Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	242

Language: English
Publisher: New York University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Illustrations
- Other: 10 black and white illustrations

eBook

Published: October 16, 2015
ISBN: 9781479812516