A professor at the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) is challenging the prevailing tradition that literature should be classified according to national and cultural categories.  In his new  book Transatlantic Literary Exchanges: 1790-1870, UNBC English Literature professor Kevin Hutchings traces the history of globalization and multiculturalism back into the nineteenth century and highlights the political, commercial, literary, and cultural ties that defined many relationships between Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and North America. 

“So often in the study of literature we find our courses divided into broad categories based on nationality,” says Dr. Hutchings, who co-edited and co-authored the new book with researchers from England, the Netherlands, Canada, and the USA. “Students usually study American, British, and Canadian Literature one nation at a time. It is rarer to study literature through the lens of real literary history, which shows that British, American, and Canadian writers in the 19th century were quite cosmopolitan and heavily influenced by one another.”

Hailing from universities around the world, Hutchings and his co-authors cover topics such as war and revolution, exploration and eco-tourism, politics and commercial trade, as well as colonialism, slavery, gender, and sexuality.

“By focusing on the international traffic of ideas among nineteenth-century authors and readers we tried to show how the literatures of contemporary Britain, Canada, and the USA were not ‘national’ but broadly based and multinational,” says Dr. Hutchings, who is also a Canada Research Chair in Literature, Culture and Environmental Studies. “For example, one of the most famous American poems of the 19th Century, Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha, provides an American take on Ojibwa history and culture. What many of Longfellow’s readers still don’t know is that the poem was influenced by Longfellow’s sole Ojibwa acquaintance, George Copway, who has been called Canada’s first international literary celebrity. Copway loved Longfellow’s poem so much he quotes from it in his own writing and he even named his daughter after a character in that work! Longfellow’s relationship with Copway is just one example of a fruitful international and intercultural exchange that is often overlooked in literature classes.”

Rather than studying diverse literary works in isolation, Transatlantic Literary Exchanges sees them as products of international and cross-cultural dialogues involving not only Western nations but Indigenous societies as well.