ENGL 364 - Americans Abroad: Travel Writing from 1800-present

“The American is a migratory animal,” wrote Robert Tomes in 1865—a sentiment as true today as in the century following America’s war of independence from Britain. Travelers visiting the so-called “Mother Country” often find it familiar but strange, welcoming but cold, generative but constricting, desirable but repellent. Students explore these and other paradoxes while analyzing American travel writing from 1800 to the present. Theoretical concepts such as “the gaze,” “the uncanny,” and “the Other” guide our study of Americans’ shifting attitudes toward Britain and the British. To understand the cultural attitudes and literary traditions underlying American travel to, and writing about, Britain over the past couple of centuries is to grasp something crucial about the forces that have shaped the American identity over the same period.

Taught on the London English study group.

Credits: 1.00
Corequisite: None
Prerequisites: None
Major/Minor Restrictions: None
Class Restriction: None
Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression
Core Component: None

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