17499		6:00-8:00	T				KNOTT
A portion of the above section reserved for majors

The “Atlantic World” paradigm is transforming historical and
interdisciplinary scholarship on the nations bordering the Atlantic
basin. Indeed, it posits the Atlantic not as a yawning watery gulf
but as a “little ocean” tightly and closely enveloped by four
continents. This graduate seminar introduces the vibrant Atlantic
world of the eighteenth century, especially but not exclusively from
the vantage-point of Britain and North America. During the early part
of the semester our goals will be two-fold: to explore methodologies,
published sources, and new electronic resources (such as the
Eighteenth-Century Collections Online, the English Short Title
Catalog and the Evans Digital Edition); and to consider topics
currently under lively and intense debate, which might range from
crossings, circulation and the circumatlantic; to slavery and race;
to transatlantic commerce and consumerism; to law, diplomacy and
democratic revolution. This will provide the tools towards the third
goal of the course: an original research paper. Varieties of
comparative, transnational and global scholarship seem to be the way
forward in many fields - a means to inch past nationally-bound
studies and to recognise interconnectedness. The long eighteenth
century, moreover, is arguably the period when the “Atlantic world”
was most powerfully a single unit. This class engages the validity
and transformative power of the Atlantic paradigm for that moment, as
well as the research strategies we need to test and explore it.