18th-Century Fiction (344-0-20)

Topic

The Multiracial 18th Century

Instructors

Jennifer Comerford

Meeting Info

Kresge Cent. Hall 2-380 Kaplan: Tues, Thurs 12:30PM - 1:50PM

Overview of class

Step aside, Bridgerton. If you're in search of drama, intrigue, seduction, and scandal, eighteenth-century British novels can make even Bridgerton look mundane. If Bridgerton appears to reimagine Regency England as more racially diverse than it really was, the actual Britain of the eighteenth century was by no means racially homogenous, and interracial encounters and marriages as well as mixed-race figures were increasingly present in life and literature of the period. In this course, we will read novels, narratives, and short stories featuring mixed-race figures. The dramatic rise in texts representing mixed-race characters as heiresses in the latter half of the century highlight rising concerns about which interests were most important to preserve—economic ones or racial ones. As we will explore, wealthy mixed-race heiresses also often occupy a contradictory position as both a product of and beneficiary of plantation slavery and exploitation mercantile ventures. Tracking the appearance of mixed-race characters in British literature alongside the development of empire, increasing cross-racial contact, solidifying racial formations, generic conventions, and the marriage plot, we will think about how novelistic and narrative forms cohere through the simultaneous representation and suppression of mixed-race figures. How does the trajectory of the marriage plot shift for mixed-race characters? How are multiracial characters depicted as mobilizing their racial indeterminacy? What anxieties, values, and interests do these texts, largely authored by white British women, register? Throughout the class, we will interrogate how multiracial characters consistently trouble tidy narratives of racial difference as well as the genres to which they belonged.

Class Materials (Required)

Aphra Behn, Oroonoko (1688), The Female American (1767), Maria Edgeworth, Belinda (1801), and The Woman of Colour (1808). Shorter works include: Lucy Peacock, "The Creole" (1786) and Jane Austen, Sanditon (1817). Films and shows may include Belle (2013) and selected episodes of Sanditon (2019) and Bridgerton (2020).

Class Attributes

Advanced Expression
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
SoC Humanities and Fine Arts Distro