ENGL 3005 The Literature of New World Encounters

This course explores how literary, cultural, and historical works stage intersections and encounters between European settlers and Indigenous peoples. Christopher Columbus’s epochal journey brought the Old World (Asia, Africa, Europe) into contact with the New World (the Americas), setting in motion the diffusion of plants, animals, peoples, and pathogens. Students will think about the economic, cultural, historical, and biological consequences of the European invasion and settlement of the Americas.