What is Hemispheric Studies?

Hemispheric Studies seeks to consider the Americas as a broad system of exchange, movement, and influence. This field of study considers national and extra-national histories in dialogue with each other, seeking to understand both the borders of nation and the way culture, history, and literature go beyond these borders.  Adopting a comparative approach, hemispheric studies explores "the overarching shape and texture of American literary and cultural history" (Levander and Levine 2). More specifically, it examines the overlapping geographies, movements, and cross-filiations between and among peoples, regions, diasporas, and nations of the American hemisphere ( 2-3). Hemispheric Studies brings together scholars working across many different fields such as Latin American, Asian American, African American, Canadian, Native American studies, and several more. In addition, it encourages a multilingual approach, attending more specifically to the primary languages of the Western Hemisphere.

Figure 1: Map of the American Hemisphere, 1823.

The Western Hemisphere

Ralph Bauer tracks the genealogy of hemispheric studies and its emergence upon the U.S.-American Studies scene in his 2009 PMLA article "Hemispheric Studies." The growth of this discipline within the U.S. academy arises from scholarly interest in transnational and postcolonial approaches to U.S. literature during the last three decades. While questions of method and concerns about a U.S.-centered hemispheric studies have arisen among scholars from throughout the Americas, today's scholars continue to push forward to explore and revise literary and cultural histories in ways that go beyond the nation while remaining attached to it. More recently, scholarly works such as Walter Mignolo's Local Histories/Global Designs (2000), Kirsten Silva Gruesz's Ambassadors of Culture: The Transamerican Origins of Latino Writing (2002), Anna Brickhouses's Transamerican Literary Relations and the Nineteenth-Century Public Sphere (2004), Gretchen Murphy's Hemispheric Imaginings (2005), Sean Goudie's Creole America (2006), Sandhya Shukla an Heidi Tinsman's Imagining Our Americas (2007), Matthew Guterl's American Mediterranean (2008), Levander and Levine's Hemispheric American Studies (2008), Bauer's Creole Subjects in the Colonial Americas (2009), and Winfried Siemerling and Sarah Phillips Casteel's Canada and Its Americas (2010) - to name just a few - continue to innovate new approaches in hemispheric studies.

The Our Americas Archive Partnership (OAAP) and Studying the Americas:

The Our Americas Archive Partnership, also called the OAAP, holds a variety of documents from across the Americas, including government documents, treaties, historical and medical records, letters written by historical and literary figures ranging from President Polk to José Martí, bills of slave sales, documents on Latin American independence, treatises on women, sketches, poems, and both well-known and lesser-known texts. These documents have been translated into English, but can also be found in Spanish, Portuguese, and French versions. (See for examples, Bill of Sale for a negro names George, 1847; Declaration of Independence of Guatemala; On the flogging of women.)

The archive can be used to search for particular documents from historical periods for the purposes of research and teaching. The archive's rich primary source documents provide an innovative way to integrate a broader understanding of the hemisphere into a lesson plan or to find full-text, rare source materials for scholarly work. Documents are made searchable through the OAAP homepage by the 1) general search option, which can be further narrowed by date, author, and concept. 2) the Americas Concepts, found in the lower, right half of the home page. This option is to help scholars and teachers get started by selecting a theme or key concept under which documents are grouped. 3) Community Tags which allow users to create their own concepts and tag documents to easily access them over and over again. These "tags" represent themes and concepts under which users group documents. Both the Americas Concepts and Community tags include descriptions of their function when users scroll over the "i" or information button to the right of each tab. Users can also check out the OAAP blog, which includes specific posts on how to use these options under the tab labeled "General."

Figure 2: The three main search options include: a general search, the Americas Concepts, and the Community Tags

Search Options

Hemispheric Studies in the Classroom:

Considering how texts, people, ideas, and concepts circulate throughout the hemisphere provides a way to read the Americas as intertwined systems of circulation. Teachers can introduce concepts of hemispheric studies into the classroom by asking their students: what is our nation's (the U.S.'s, for instance) relation to other nations and regions of the hemisphere? Are these relations only geographic or are they also political, cultural, and economic? More general examples such as discussions of immigration raised in the news, the integration of Spanish slang into everyday English, or even of Spanish radio and television stations can be helpful starting points to get students thinking about U.S. culture and its hemispheric relations.

Teachers can implement this type of thinking in the study of literary and historical texts. For example, contraband copies of Harriet Beecher Stowe's best-selling Uncle Tom's Cabin made their way to various Latin American countries such as Brazil, influencing concepts of slavery, resistance, and rebellion not only in the U.S., but throughout the hemisphere. Stowe's primarily U.S.-centered novel, became part of a stream of ideas about freedom and enslavement that circulated during the 19th century. This type of study fosters broader conceptual and geographic connections that bring the national and the transnational into overlap in complex, innovative ways. (For more information, see the Our Americas Archive Partnership educational module "Slavery, Resistance, and Rebellion across the Americas".

Figure 3: Image from 1823 edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Another example of a hemispheric approach might consider more broadly how historical events such as the construction of the Panama Canal redirected the flow of traffic throughout the hemisphere. The construction of the canal also sheds light on the hemispheric history of disease, specifically yellow fever. Many workers died of the disease in constructing the canal. OAAP documents from across the Americas, such as Dr. Osterhout's letter to Surgeon General concerning the second yellow fever case in Bocas del Torro, August 23, 1905 offers a way to bring rare primary source material into the classroom. Considering the overlap between disease and empire provides a way to study the U.S. Progressive Era (18902-1920s) outside U.S. borders. (For further study, see Robin Sager's module "A Global View of Disease: Yellow Fever and the Panama Canal.")

Teachers might also have students look at the history of particular regions, cities, and institutions to track the flow of ideas, people, and materials throughout the hemisphere. For instance, studying a city such as New Orleans and its geographic location within the Gulf of Mexico between the U.S. and Central and South America can help students to see how the circulation of people and goods formulated the diverse city that continues today. Documents such as S. Adlaberto de Cardona's From El Paso to New Orleans, for instance, offers a way to think about New Orleans as part of hemispheric stream of movement and travel. Tracking the history and culture of cities like New Orleans or regions like the U.S.-Mexican borderlands and the Caribbean reinscribes these places within a broader geography.

The OAAP offers a series of educational modules, meaning short essays that include teaching suggestions, classroom activities, images, study questions, and, in some cases, lesson plans through which to integrate primary source documents from throughout the Americas into the literature, history, and Spanish literature and language classrooms. The examples listed above are just a few instances of ways that hemispheric studies can enrich and broaden our perspectives of culture and history. For more detail, visit the Educational Materials section linked to the OAAP homepage to find specific modules covering a variety of thematic material and historical periods.

Bibliography:

Bauer, Ralph. "Hemispheric Studies." PMLA 124.1 (2009): 234-250.

Ledoux, Corey. "Slavery, Resistance, and Rebellion across the Americas." Connexions. August 8, 2011. http://cnx.org/content/m38437/latest/?collection=col11314/latest.

Sager, Robin. "A Global View of Disease: Yellow Fever and the Panama Canal." Connexions. August 8, 2011.http://cnx.org/content/m34201/latest/?collection=col11312/latest.

Levander, Caroline F. and Robert S. Levine. Hemispheric American Studies. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2008.

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Last edited by AnaMaria Seglie on Sep 8, 2011 10:50 am -0500.