Babel of the Atlantic
Pennsylvania State University Press (Verlag)
978-0-271-08323-0 (ISBN)
Despite shifting trends in the study of Oceanic Atlantic history, the colonial Atlantic world as it is described by historians today continues to be a largely English-only space; even when other language communities are examined, they, too, are considered to be monolingual and discrete. Babel of the Atlantic pushes back against this monolingual fallacy by documenting multilingualism, translation, and fluid movement across linguistic borders.
Focusing on Philadelphia and surrounding areas that include Germantown, Bethlehem, and the so-called Indian country to the west, this volume demonstrates the importance of viewing inhabitants not as members of isolated language communities, whether English, German, Lenape, Mohican, or others, but as creators of a vibrant zone of mixed languages and shifting politics. Organized around four themes—religion, education, race and abolitionism, and material culture and architecture—and drawing from archives such as almanacs, newspapers, and the material world, the chapters in this volume show how polyglot, tolerant, and multilingual spaces encouraged diverse peoples to coexist. Contributors examine subjects such as the multicultural Moravian communities in colonial Pennsylvania, the Charity School movement of the 1750s, and the activities of Quaker abolitionists, showing how educational and religious movements addressed and embraced cultural and linguistic variety.
Drawing early American scholarship beyond the normative narrative of monolingualism, this volume will be invaluable to historians and sociolinguists whose work focuses on Pennsylvania and colonial, revolutionary, and antebellum America.
In addition to the editor, the contributors include Craig Atwood, Patrick M. Erben, Cynthia G. Falk, Katherine Faull, Wolfgang Flügel, Katharine Gerbner, Maruice Jackson, Lisa Minardi, Jürgen Overhoff, and Birte Pfleger.
Bethany Wiggin is Associate Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pennsylvania and Founding Director of the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities.
Contents
List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Multilingual Soundings in the Colonial Mid-Atlantic; “Differences of Manners, Languages and Extraction. Was Now No More”?
Bethany Wiggin
PART 1 NEW WORLD, NEW RELIGIONS
1 . “Wie ein Nimrod / Like a Nimrod”: Babel, Confusion, and Coercive Bilingualism in the Eighteenth-Century Mid-Atlantic
Patrick M. Erben
2 . The Moravian Threat to the Old World Establishment Craig Atwood
3 . Women, Migration, and Moravian Mission: Negotiating Pennsylvania’s Colonial Landscapes
Katherine Faull
PART 2 THE LANGUAGES OF EDUCATION AND ESTABLISHED RELIGIONS
4 . Benjamin Franklin, the Philadelphia Academy, Halle, and Göttingen
Jürgen Overhoff
5 . German or English? Halle’s Pastors in Pennsylvania and the Search for the Right Language, 1742–1820
Wolfgang Flügel
PART 3 THE LANGUAGES OF RACE AND (ANTI-)SLAVERY
6 . Writing Against Slavery: Germantown, Quakers, and the Ethnic Origins of Early Antislavery Thought
Katharine Gerbner
7 . “Ein schrecklicher Zustand”: Race, Slavery, and Gradual Emancipation in Pennsylvania
Birte Pfleger
8 . How the Quakers Worked with Moravians, Germans, the French, the British, and Enslaved and Free Africans: All in the Antislavery Cause
Maurice Jackson
PART 4 THE LANGUAGES OF WOOD AND STONE
9 . Communicating Through Wood and Stone: Building a New World Identity in Pennsylvania
Cynthia G. Falk
10 . Germans in Colonial Philadelphia: Ethnicity, Hybridity,
and the Material World
Lisa Minardi
List of Contributors
Index
Erscheinungsdatum | 06.07.2019 |
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Reihe/Serie | Max Kade Research Institute |
Zusatzinfo | 44 Halftones, black and white |
Verlagsort | University Park |
Sprache | englisch |
Maße | 152 x 229 mm |
Gewicht | 612 g |
Themenwelt | Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte |
Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Wirtschaftsgeschichte | |
Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Sprachwissenschaft | |
Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie | |
Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung | |
Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie | |
ISBN-10 | 0-271-08323-9 / 0271083239 |
ISBN-13 | 978-0-271-08323-0 / 9780271083230 |
Zustand | Neuware |
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