Date Awarded

Fall 2016

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Department

American Studies

Advisor

Susan V. Donaldson

Committee Member

Elizabeth Barnes

Committee Member

Lynn Weiss

Committee Member

Scott R. Nelson

Abstract

This dissertation is about a hemispheric understanding of the Americas by foregrounding hybrid literatures written both by Caribbean and U.S. American authors as the space where a transnational slave past of diversity, relation, and cross-cultural influence can be revealed and discussed. I use the term hybrid because these imaginary writings engage with actual events and real-life people that have shaped the history of the Americas, the interpretation of which is re-negotiated here though both history and literature. and literatures because it is not only novels but also epic poetry and oral stories that writers resort to in order to restore narratives that have long been silenced, forgotten, or ignored in official narratives. In this literary analysis creolization, the cross-cultural merging of peoples and their histories, emerges as the characteristic event of American history, allowing for the parallel but different histories of the Americas to come to light. From an American Studies perspective, I thus argue that such is the nature of creolized histories, being parallel in their content and protagonists with the established narratives but perpetually different in their equally valid readings and interpretation.

DOI

http://doi.org/10.21220/S2466N

Rights

© The Author

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