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India in the American Imaginary, 1780s–1880s

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  • © 2017

Overview

Editors:
  1. Anupama Arora

    1. University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, North Dartmouth, USA

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  2. Rajender Kaur

    1. William Paterson University of New Jersey, Wayne, USA

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  • Discusses a breadth of materials ranging from paintings to missionary tracts to literary texts by writers such as Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, and Maria Susanna Cummins
  • Offers a vast appeal to scholars interested in American Studies, Asian Studies, South Asian Studies, Asian-American Studies, transatlantic studies, and postcolonial studies
  • Breaks open a scholarly discussion that has been neglected about the shifting American attitudes towards India from 1780-1880
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Part of the book series: The New Urban Atlantic (NUA)

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Table of contents (9 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxiii
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  2. India in the American Imaginary: Indo-American Encounters, 1780s–1880s

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
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    2. India in the American Imaginary, 1780s–1880s

      • Rajender Kaur, Anupama Arora
      Pages 3-37

  3. Transatlantic Imperial Circuits: Trade, Missionary Activity, and the British East India Company

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 39-39
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    2. An Eye for Prices, an Eye for Souls: American Merchants and Missionaries in the Indian Subcontinent, 1784–1838

      • Michael A. Verney
      Pages 41-74

    3. The Empire Comes Home: Thomas Law’s Mixed-Race Family in the Early American Republic

      • Rosemarie Zagarri
      Pages 75-108

  4. The Imperial Imaginary: Indo-American Interactions in the Literary, Philosophical, and Political Sphere

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 109-109
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    2. Indo-American Encounters in Melville and Thoreau: Philosophy, Commerce, and Religious Dialogue

      • Brian Yothers
      Pages 111-140

    3. “Every India Mail”: The Lamplighter and the Prospect of U.S. Transoceanic (Postal) Empire, 1847–1854

      • Mark B. Kelley
      Pages 141-171

  5. Imperial Publics: India in U.S. Reform Debates on Race, Slavery, and Labor

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 173-173
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    2. Cast in Print: The Indian Mutiny, Asiatic Racial Forms, and American Domesticity

      • Anirudra Thapa
      Pages 175-197

    3. India and U.S. Cultures of Reform: Caste as Keyword

      • Susan M. Ryan
      Pages 199-227

    4. “Considered a Citizen of the United States”: George DeGrasse, a South Asian in Early (African) America

      • Pratibha Kanakamedala
      Pages 229-243

  6. Orientalist Imaginings: Royal India and American Fine Arts and Painting

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 245-245
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    2. “A Dazzle of Light”: Edwin Lord Weeks and Royal India

      • Romita Ray
      Pages 247-281

  7. Back Matter

    Pages 283-292
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Keywords

About this book

This book seeks to frame the “the idea of India” in the American imaginary within a transnational lens that is attentive to global flows of goods, people, and ideas within the circuits of imperial and maritime economies in nineteenth century America (roughly 1780s-1880s). This diverse and interdisciplinary volume – with essays by upcoming as well as established scholars – aims to add to an understanding of the fast changing terrain of economic, political, and cultural life in the US as it emerged from being a British colony to having imperial ambitions of its own on the global stage. The essays trace, variously, the evolution of the changing self-image of a nation embodying a surprisingly cosmopolitan sensibility, open to different cultural values and customs in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century to one that slowly adopted rigid and discriminatory racial and cultural attitudes spawned by the widespread missionary activities of the ABCFM and the fierce economic pulls and pushes of American mercantilism by the end of the nineteenth century. The different uses of India become a way of refining an American national identity.

Reviews

“India in the American Imaginary reject monolithic explanation and provide diverse and new perspectives on how Europeans or Americans related to Indians and Indian culture and society. These images and interactions are contextualized in realms … thereby making them appealing to the interest of students and scholars in many disciplines.” (Tara Sethia, Journal of World History, Vol. 30 (4), December, 2019)

Editors and Affiliations

  • University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, North Dartmouth, USA

    Anupama Arora

  • William Paterson University of New Jersey, Wayne, USA

    Rajender Kaur

About the editors

Anupama Arora is Associate Professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Massachusetts, USA.

Rajender Kaur is Associate Professor of English at William Paterson University of New Jersey, USA, where she teaches courses in postcolonial, Asian American, British, and World literatures.

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