In 1823, President James Monroe announced that the Western Hemisphere was closed to any future European colonization and that the United States would protect the Americas as a space destined for democracy. Over the next century, these ideas-which came to be known as the Monroe Doctrine-provided the framework through which Americans understood and articulated their military and diplomatic role in the world. Hemispheric Imaginings demonstrates that North Americans conceived and developed the Monroe Doctrine in relation to transatlantic literary narratives. Gretchen Murphy argues that fiction and journalism were crucial to popularizing and making sense of the Doctrine's contradictions, including the fact that it both drove and concealed U.S. imperialism. Presenting fiction and popular journalism as key arenas in which such inconsistencies were challenged or obscured, Murphy highlights the major role writers played in shaping conceptions of the U.S. empire.

Murphy juxtaposes close readings of novels with analyses of nonfiction texts. From uncovering the literary inspirations for the Monroe Doctrine itself to tracing visions of hemispheric unity and transatlantic separation in novels by Lydia Maria Child, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Lew Wallace, and Richard Harding Davis, she reveals the Doctrine's forgotten cultural history. In making a vital contribution to the effort to move American Studies beyond its limited focus on the United States, Murphy questions recent proposals to reframe the discipline in hemispheric terms. She warns that to do so risks replicating the Monroe Doctrine's proprietary claim to isolate the Americas from the rest of the world.

Examines the key role that the spatial construct (embodied by the Monroe Doctrine) of the western hemisphere played in enabling and effacing U.S. empire.

About the Author

Gretchen Murphy is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Minnesota, Morris.

Reviews
"Hemispheric Imaginings makes an articulate, original argument for the centrality of the Monroe Doctrine to the nineteenth-century imagination. Gretchen Murphy's exploration of the cultural influence of the Monroe Doctrine, above and beyond its political effects, is long overdue."-Kirsten Silva Gruesz, author of Ambassadors of Culture: The Transamerican Origins of Latino Writing
"In these times of increasing attention to imperialism, protectionism, and U. S. intervention around the world, Gretchen Murphy's study of the political and cultural articulations of the Monroe Doctrine is not only welcome but also important reading. Murphy provides an insightful genealogy of how a 'principle' first affirmed by James Monroe came to be a cornerstone of American diplomacy and military action; at the same time, she provides a model reading of how an ideological concept was developed and sustained."-Susan Jeffords, author of Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan Era
"To historians, this book offers an interesting example of the interplay among literature, foreign policy, and the construction of national imaginings. . . . This book is a welcome contribution to the field of transnational studies of the United States. . . . Hemispheric Imaginings provides historians of international relations new propositions to reflect upon." -- Ricardo D. Salvatore * Diplomatic History *



Book Information
ISBN 9780822334965
Author Gretchen Murphy
Format Paperback
Page Count 208
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 286g