U.S. Orientalisms

U.S. Orientalisms: Race, Nation, and Gender in Literature, 1790-1890 is the first extensive and politicized study of nineteenth-century American discourses that helped build an idea of nationhood with control over three "Orients": the "Barbary" Orient, the Orient of Egypt, and the Orient of India.

Malini Johar Schueller persuasively argues that current notions about the East can be better understood as latter-day manifestations of the earlier U.S. visions of the Orient refracted variously through millennial fervor, racial-cultural difference, and ideas of westerly empire. This book will be of interest to readers in American history, postcolonial studies, gender studies, and literary theory.