Amy Kaplan
Graduate Chair, Department of English
University of Pennsylvania

''Where is Guantánamo?''

Amy Kaplan has been at the forefront of attempts to expand our knowledge of American Literature beyond the U.S. borders and to explore literature’s conflicted role in imperial and expansionist projects. In her most recent book, The Anarchy of Empire (Harvard University Press). Kaplan looks at late nineteenth-century U.S. interventions in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Haiti, and Latin America and at the domestic metaphors of home and hearth often enlisted to solidify national identity in new territories. By reading a wide variety of texts--from court cases, domestic manuals, and popular novels to Mark Twain's travel writing and movies such as Citizen Kane--Kaplan challenges the disciplinary boundaries between high and popular art, literature and foreign policy, national literature, and the literatures of empire. In Kaplan’s view, securing new territories such as the Philippines or Puerto Rico are as much a cultural as a geo-political initiative.

Reception to Follow the Lecture
Free & Open to the Public

The Elliott Memorial Lecture is presented annually by the UCSD Department of Literature, with the support of the Robert C. Elliott Memorial Fund, which was established at the time of Professor Elliott’s death in April of 1981. A founding member of the Department of Literature, Robert Elliott authored The Power of Satire (1968), The Shape of Utopia (1970), and The Literary Persona (1982).

Please contact Patricia Valiton, 858-534-4618 or pvaliton@ucsd.edu, for any necessary accommodations to enable your access and participation.