Courses Designed to
Meet General Education Requirements
World Cultural Studies
St. Lawrence University
The Cultural Encounters Program
John Hunter
Cultural Encounters/ Level 2
Creating Colonialism: The
Literature of Exploitation
and Cultural Contact
Since widespread European exploration
began in the late fifteenth century,
colonizing nations have been faced with
the problem of describing "alien" cultures
and places. Choosing from amongst the
vast and variegated literature that
this situation has generated, this course
will chart and analyze the important
features of the descriptions and/or
re-imaginings of the territories and
peoples that came under European (particularly
English-speaking European) control,
in a historical investigation of the
process that we now call colonialism.
We will begin by examining the economic
motivations of sixteenth century colonial
activity, Europe's place in the larger
world, and the ways in which existing
narratives of inferiority (racial, class-based,
and gendered) were adapted to suit the
people of the New World. Later sections
of this course will consider the romance
of the American Frontier, the tragedy
of the "noble savage", and the nineteenth
century colonization of Africa. We will
end by coming full circle, analyzing
how colonial stereotypes were eventually
turned back onto the European underclasses
and how they still survive (and thrive)
in present day representations of immigrants
and "aliens." This course will be run
as a seminar: students will be required
to research and present historical/contextual
material in oral presentations, write
regular journals on the assigned texts,
and write two long papers. There will
be no final exam.
Primary Texts:
- John Hawkins, Martin Frobisher,
et. al. Elizabethean Narratives
of Exploration
- Michael de Montaigne, "Of Cannibals"
- Sir Walter Raleigh, Selections from
The Discovery of New Guiana
- William Shakespeare, The Tempest
- Aphra Behn, Oronooko: or the
Royal Slave
- James Fenimore Cooper, The Last
of the Mohicans
- Olaudah Equiano, The Life of
Olaudah Equiano
- Selections from Native American
Testimony
- Henry Morton Stanley, Selections
from his exploration narratives
- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
- Jack London, People of the Abyss
- Stanislaw Lem, Solaris
- Janet Abu-Lughod, Before European
Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350
- Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of
Darkness
- Stephen Greenblatt, Marvellous
Possessions: the Wonder of the New
World
- Frederick Jackson Turner, The
Closing of the American Frontier
- Proceedings of the Berlin West Africa
Conference
- Essays by Frederic Jameson, Thomas
King, Raymond Williams, and others
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