U.S. orientalisms
Subtitle: race, nation, and gender in literature, 1790-1890
By: Malini Johar Schueller.
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Ann Arbor
Language: eng
Number of pages: 248
Subjects: American literature -- Oriental influences; American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Stereotype (Psychology) in literature; Nationalism in literature; Imperialism in literature; Race in literature; Sex in literature; Asia -- In literature; Africa, North -- In literature; Asia -- Foreign public opinion, American
Description: U.S. Orientalisms: Race, Nation, and Gender in Literature, 1790-1890 is the first extensive and politicized study of nineteenth-century American discourses that helped build an idea of nationhood with control over three "Orients": the "Barbary" Orient, the Orient of Egypt, and the Orient of India.

Malini Johar Schueller persuasively argues that current notions about the East can be better understood as latter-day manifestations of the earlier U.S. visions of the Orient refracted variously through millennial fervor, racial-cultural difference, and ideas of westerly empire. This book will be of interest to readers in American history, postcolonial studies, gender studies, and literary theory.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 207-242) and index.
Table of contents: title: Race(ing) to the Orient; title: Algerian slavery and the liberty vision : Royall Tyler, James Ellison, Susanna Rowson, Washington Irving, Peter Markoe; title: Missionary colonialism, Egyptology, racial borderlands, and the satiric impulse : M.M. Ballow, William Ware, John DeForest, Maria Susanna Cummins, David F. Dorr; title: Subversive orientalisms : Edgar Allan Poe, Harriet Prescott Spofford, and Herman Melville; title: The culture of Asian orientalism : missionary writings, travel writings, popular poetry; title: "Mine Asia" : Emerson's erotics of oriental possession; title: Whitman, Columbus, and the Asian mother.