Tales of Transit brings together advances from the fields of transportation and social history, translation studies and literary scholarship to cast new light on the great transatlantic migration movements from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. For a long time, these movements have been studied from the perspective of the sending and receiving societies, while not much research was devoted to what happens in between. The contributions in this collection move these in-between places to center stage by focusing attention on immigrants' liminal experiences on board steamers and in exit ports on both sides of the Atlantic. Drawing on a variety of archival sources as well as travel writings, fiction, and memoir literature by first-, second- and even third-generation immigrants, Tales of Transit highlights how transatlantic migration during the period 1850-1950 was seldom a straightforward, one-way movement. The viewpoints represented in this volume go against the stereotype of the migrants as huddled masses and shows them actively engaging in complex rituals of engagement and disengagement.

Climate has infused the literary history of the United States, from the writings of explorers and conquerors, over early national celebrations of the American climate, to the flowering of romantic nature writing. This volume traces this complex semantic history in American thought and literature to examine rhetorical and philosophical discourses that continue to propel and constrain American climate perceptions today. It explores how American literature from its inception up until the present engages with the climate, both real and perceived. Climate and American Literature attends to the central place that the climate has historically occupied in virtually all aspects of American life, from public health and medicine, over the organization of the political system and the public sphere, to the culture of sensibility, aesthetics and literary culture. It details American inflections of climate perceptions over time to offer revealing new perspectives on one of the most pressing issues of our time.

A broad, comparative and trans-Atlantic approach to the Age of Revolutions Cutting across disciplines and linguistic borders, this book explores the dissemination and transformation of revolutionary ideas in the period between the mid-eighteenth century and the revolutions of 1848. In addition to revolutionary movements in Europe and the United States, it deals with the international impact of the Haitian Revolution. The chapters in the book adopt transnational approaches to revolution to show how political uprisings often reverberated far beyond the borders of the states directly affected - in the form of narratives, metaphors, translations, letters, pamphlets and dialogues, as well as physical objects.

A broad, comparative and trans-Atlantic approach to the Age of Revolutions Cutting across disciplines and linguistic borders, this book explores the dissemination and transformation of revolutionary ideas in the period between the mid-eighteenth century and the revolutions of 1848. In addition to revolutionary movements in Europe and the United States, it deals with the international impact of the Haitian Revolution. The chapters in the book adopt transnational approaches to revolution to show how political uprisings often reverberated far beyond the borders of the states directly affected - in the form of narratives, metaphors, translations, letters, pamphlets and dialogues, as well as physical objects.

The biggest challenge of the twenty-first century is to bring the effects of public life into relation with the intractable problem of global atmospheric change. Climate and the Picturesque in the American Tropics explains how we came to think of the climate as something abstract and remote rather than a force that actively shapes our existence. The book argues that this separation between climate and sensibility predates the rise of modern climatology and has deep roots in the era of colonial expansion, when the American tropics were transformed into the economic supplier for Euro-American empires. The book shows how the writings of American travellers in the Caribbean registered and pushed forward this new understanding of the climate in a pivotal period in modern history, roughly between 1770 and 1860, which was fraught with debates over slavery, environmental destruction, and colonialism. Offering novel readings of authors including J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Leonora Sansay, William Cullen Bryant, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sophia Peabody, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and James McCune Smith in light of their engagements with the American tropics, this book shows that these authors drew on a climatic epistemology that fused science and sentiment in ways that citizen science is aspiring to do today. By suggesting a new genealogy of modern climate thinking, Climate and the Picturesque in the American Tropics thus highlights the urgency of revisiting received ideas of tropicality deeply ingrained in American culture that continue to inform current debates on climate debt and justice.