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

by Robert Lawrence Gunn

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781479849055
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	10/16/2015
Series:	America and the Long 19th Century , #6
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

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

Table of Contents

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

Editorial Reviews

"A superb work. Summing Up: Highly recommended."

Choice

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

American Quarterly

"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."

Kirsten Silva Gruesz

"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."

Robert David Aguirre

An original, beautifully written book on the rapidly changing ideas about language in American culture during the early nineteenth century. Ethnology and Empire engages 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.”-Kirsten Silva Gruesz,author of Ambassadors of Culture: The Transamerican Origins of Latino Writing

“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 Empire makes 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.”-Robert David Aguirre,author of Informal Empire: Mexico and Central America in Victorian Culture

“A superb work. Summing Up: Highly recommended.”- Choice

From the Publisher