Toward a Multilingual Victorian Transatlanticism

Abstract

This essay argues that scholarship being done under the sign of transatlantic studies, and Victorian transatlantic studies in particular, is problematically focused on the anglophone northern Atlantic region. Challenging both the essentialness and the disciplinary primacy of the “special relationship” between Britain and the United States, I argue instead that the entire nineteenth-century Atlantic world was a geographically and linguistically permeable space. Paying attention to crossings from north to south and vice versa is both methodologically and ethically necessary. From a methodological perspective, it can help us produce much more thorough answers to the questions transatlantic studies purports to ask about identity and community. But reading beyond anglophone British and U.S. American texts can also help us decolonize our reading and thinking. Of course, work like this requires scholars to read in second and third languages; as such, this essay discusses and denaturalizes the institutional barriers to multilingual English studies. It also offers a case study—a brief reading of a novel by Argentine writer Vicente Fidel López—demonstrating the insights that can be gained by expanding both our geographic perspective and our methodological toolbox.

Prioritizing Pedagogy in Victorian Studies

“…22 Another way is to challenge the preeminence of anglophone literature in Victorian transatlantic studies with a multilingual conceptualization of the nineteenth-century Atlantic region. 23 Several journals have welcomed interventions focused on diversifying Victorian studies. 24 However, such efforts in diversifying the field have remained primarily confined to methodologies in research, although an increasing number of Victorian studies scholars are currently affiliated with teaching-intensive institutions.…”

"All Ways Open to all Men": Anthony Trollope and Mary Seacole in The Central American Transit Zones

“…17 Jessie Reeder's work offers a fuller accounting of the interactions between British poetic and novelistic form and the project of British dominance in Latin America. 18 Ronjaunee Chatterjee, Alicia Mireles Christoff, and Amy R. Wong have likewise outlined a model of Victorian studies that can welcome all these varying perspectives, thinking expansively across disciplinary formations and across experiences to unsettle the liberal-inclusionary model that still subtends much work on race and empire in Victorian studies. 19 These critical currents are perfectly positioned to inform and advance readings of the literatures produced in and about the transit zones, situated as they were at the crossroads of multiple imperial projects.…”