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Atlantic studies prospects : complexities and singularities, flows and places -- A brief genealogy : from Atlantic history to Atlantic studies -- Caliban's scamels : from Shakespearean romance to ethnographic site -- Apple of Peru, Hester Prynne, and colonial Boston -- "A refugee from history" : Douglass's heroic slave in the Atlantic world -- From Mundus Novus to Atlantic world : three early modern world maps -- Mapping practices: word, line, image -- Conclusion: Atlantic studies and global currents. "In a work of critical reflection and innovation, William Boelhower examines the cultural shift represented by the new paradigm of Atlantic studies, a discipline that emerged equally from an older Atlantic history, defined by imperial traditions, and a newer, critical front of postcolonial and cultural studies. Divided into three sections, Atlantic Studies: Prospects and Challenges offers a critical survey of the field that also proposes new horizons for inquiry and critique. Part 1, "Concepts and Genealogy," analyzes the interdisciplinary methodologies that emerged to approach the Atlantic world in a larger, circum-Atlantic context, studying the exchanges of peoples and cultures instead of rigidly defined national and international boundaries. Part 2, "Case Studies across the Humanities," offers new readings of three well-known literary texts--Shakespeare's The Tempest, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and Frederick Douglass's "The Heroic Slave"--as exemplars of how an Atlantic studies perspective acknowledges spatial and cultural dimensions that disrupt the traditional scales of national literatures. Part 3, "The Cartographic Challenge," foregrounds the new expertise that went into the mapping of the Atlantic world as it emerged in the early modern period, focusing on maps drawn in the late 1400s and early 1500s, travel literature, and the genres of utopia and shipwreck. Boelhower argues for the importance of analyzing cartographic practices and strategies to understand how they shaped the visual and textual representations of the Atlantic world. Written by one of the founders of the discipline, Atlantic Studies: Prospects and Challenges offers both an accessible overview of the field and an engaging reflection on the challenges it faces going forward"--
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