Kevin King

This course will survey the literary, political, and life writing of radical circum-Atlantic travelers and emigrants in the long nineteenth century. We will focus on how the movement of these people and their ideas between the Caribbean, the United States, and Britain impacted the various political formations and reform movements in which they took part. From fugitive and formerly enslaved Black West Indians and African Americans who became leaders and propagandists in British working-class movements to British working-class political refugees who joined the anti-slavery cause in the United States, and beyond, we will consider the productive yet uneven ways in which a diverse, multiethnic and transnational group of writers contributed to a single radical literary tradition. Readings may include periodicals, political tracts, letters, poetry, novels, and memoirs by such writers as Robert Wedderburn, James Dawson Burn, Frederick Douglas, and Claude McKay as well as key historical and critical works like Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker’s The Many-Headed Hydra.