Anglo-American Cultural Relations and Travel (Early Republic and Antebellum)

European Anti-Americanism and American Literary Response

My current research deals with the American literary response to the comments of British travelers and reviewers during the first decades of the nineteenth century.   I believe that this understudied subject is vital to understanding the creation of American literary nationalism as well as the attempts of the Federalists to find a suitable role after their demise as a national political force.  Secondarily, I also believe that a project like mine has some contemporary relevance as Americans try to understand our perception worldwide. The scope of my research is transnational, involving a nearly continuous flow of words and persons back and forth across the Atlantic. 

Writers of this generation were the first to have to figure out what independence would mean for American culture.  Many Americans, particularly those of Federalist opinions, had inherited rigid literary tastes and a distrust of democratic individualism from Britain.   Their collective work on the issue of Anglo-American relations represented no less than a refashioning of American identity.  

I have a secondary research interest in Western Perceptions of East Asia and published encyclopedia articles on Western travelers to Beijing, China and Korea.