From 1488, when Portuguese traders rounded the Cape of Good Hope on the southern tip of Africa, until 1802, when Matthew Finders completed his circumnavigation of Australia, European soldiers, merchants, vagabonds, and intellectuals were engaged in a global enterprise of exploration and ‘discovery’. The contacts, exchanges, and conquests that occurred in this period shape the world we live in now: these processes include the transformation and annihilation of native societies, the Transatlantic movement of peoples, the exploitation of new natural resources, and the spread of some languages to the detriment of others. This period represents the first great period of globalization and understanding what happened and why remains vital for citizens of the world today.

In ‘Literatures of Exploration’ students will examine the writings produced by these travelers to learn how the knowledge and worldviews of the explorers shaped their perceptions of new natural environments and cultures, but also how the data from ‘the New World’ challenged long-held assumptions about the order of their own societies. In addition to the Europeans’ exposure to new customs and lifeways, commodities like coffee, tea, sugar, tobacco, silk, and pepper have hugely important roles to play in our story.

We will explore these questions, and many others, through the close analysis of literary texts and the production of a serious of arguments in essay form. This course will equip students with the reading and writing skills needed to engage in academic conversation at the university level, and, to that end, the instruction will focus on developing effective writing and analytical processes—from research methods to note-taking and drafting to final revision—as well as our course’s subject matter. Grades will be determined through the evaluation of a student’s written work, homework assignments, class preparation, and participation.