"The Sea Is History": Exploring the Atlantic

The paradigm of Atlantic studies combines the concerns of history, culture studies, and literature and takes as its area of inquiry the so-called "circum-Atlantic world," an oceanic space triangulated by the land masses of Europe, Africa, and the Americas. As a field of inquiry, Atlantic studies has thus emerged in recent years to question and modify academic thinking which understood culture and history predominantly along the lines of the nation-state. In re-focusing on the Atlantic as a space in-between, intercultural and interdisciplinary research can establish readings which add new dimensions to our study of cultures on three continents. Based on the theories of William Boelhower, Donna Gabaccia, and Bernard Bailyn, 'The Sea Is History' explores cultural, literary, and historical phenomena ranging from colonial times to the present and focusing on issues such as the colonial Atlantic, the Atlantic slave trade, history in the Caribbean, and transatlantic relations and negotiations. The volume brings together writers of fiction as well as scholars from a variety of fields (literature, history, cultural anthropology, and sociology) whose work draws on genres such as prose, poetry, drama, historical documents, film, and music.