Recovers a comparative literary history of migration

This collection initiates transnational, transcultural and interdisciplinary conversations about migration in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Migrants are by definition liminal, and many have existed historically in the murky spaces between nations, regions or ethnicities. These essays together traverse the globe, revealing the experiences – real or imagined – of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century migrants, from dispossessed Native Americans to soldiers in South America, Turkish refugees to Scottish settlers. They explore the aesthetic and rhetorical frameworks used to represent migrant experiences during a time when imperial expansion and technological developments made the fortunes of some migrants and made exiles out of others. These frameworks continue to influence the narratives we tell ourselves about migration today and were crucial in producing a distinctively modern subjectivity in which mobility and rootlessness have become normative.

Key Features

Offers a comparative framework for understanding the modern history of migration and the aesthetics of mobility Foregrounds interdisciplinary debates about belonging, rights, and citizenship Demonstrates how mobility unsettles the national, cultural, racialized, and gendered frames we often use to organize literary and historical study Brings together scholars from the US and Europe to explore the connections between migrant experiences and the emergence of modernity Emphasizes the globalism of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries