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After the American Revolution, U.S. American literature and culture were shaped by transatlantic and inter-American relations. Issues such as the Haitian Revolution, Spanish American independence, slave economies and colonialism influenced the ways Americans defined themselves as a nation and as individuals.

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In the decades following the American Revolution, literary and cultural discourses, but also American collective and individual identification were shaped by transatlantic relations and inter-American exchanges and conflicts. The way Americans defined themselves as a nation and as individuals was shaped by such historical events and social issues as the Haitian Revolution, the struggles for independence in Spanish America, ties with Caribbean slave economies, and rivalries with other colonial powers in the Americas. Contextualizing transatlantic and inter-American relations within a framework of the Western Hemisphere, the essays collected in this volume discuss inter-American relations in the early United States, and in American, European and Spanish-American writing of the period.

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Contents: Markus Heide/Gabriele Pisarz-Ramirez: Introduction: The Early United States in a Transnational Perspective - Wil M. Verhoeven: Trouble on the Western Frontier: Sedition and Secessionism in the Ohio Valley, 1783-1806 - Barbara Buchenau: Empire - Nation - Urbanity: Renewing Scripts and Frames in the Old Northwest - Markus Heide: The Hemispheric Frame and Travel Writing of the Early United States: Zebulon Pike, Henry Marie Brackenridge, and William Duane - Gabriele Pisarz-Ramirez: From "Southern Brethren" to "Treacherous Cowards": Temporal Narratives of Latin America in Early Nineteenth-Century U.S. America - Astrid Haas: Mexican Travelers and the "Texas Question", 1821-1836 - Hannah Spahn: Erasing the Stamp of Toussaint L´Ouverture? The Haitian Revolution and the Question of Character - Stefan L. Brandt: The Algerine Dilemma: (Cons)Piracy and the Specter of North Africa in Early U.S. Barbary Narratives - Alma Villanueva: The Muslim Slave Auto/biographical Tradition: Disrupting the Master-Slave Dialectic in the Americas - Astrid M. Fellner: "Subaltern Knowledges in the Borderlands:" Drawing the Sexual Boundaries of the Early United States.

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Gabriele Pisarz-Ramirez is Professor of American Studies and Minority Studies at Leipzig University (Germany). Her research interests and fields of publication include inter-American Studies, race and ethnicity (especially Latino/a Studies), transculturation, early American Studies, and 19th century popular literature.
Markus Heide is Senior Lecturer of American Studies at the Swedish Institute for North American Studies (SINAS) at Uppsala University (Sweden). He has published monographs and essays on different issues in U.S.-Latino/a Studies and 19th century American literature, with a particular interest in inter-American relations.

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