Description: This volume explores the role of the Pacific Ocean in the American Revolution and its influence on early American culture and literature. It studies the transoceanic connections between the Pacific and Atlantic and the political and literary developments that accompanied the period's explosion in global maritime travel.
Review Quotes: "brilliant and transformative ... Burnham's historical and theoretical research for this project is vast and inspiring; the genre of the review does not do justice to the complex ideas that underpin the book and its epilogue. Transoceanic America is also clearly written and a pleasure to read, full of beautiful images and surprising connections to contemporary culture. The case it makes for using literature to enrich "cognitive maps," both our own and those of our students, is timely and persuasive." -- Anna Brickhouse, Early American Literature
"Through this new vision, the author revisits both canonical and noncanonical texts and reconsiders issues of empire, slavery, cannibalism, revolution, consumption, and the female body. What Burnham ultimately offers is a new sense of American literary history grounded in the networks of commercial, political, and textual ties and derived from the vast and intertwined water world of the Atlantic and the Pacific. ... Highly recommended." -- Y. Shu, CHOICE