Florida as a Hemispheric Region

About the Book Chapter

The chapter investigates Florida as a “hemispheric region,” exploring how its peripheral position at the southeastern tip of the United States, its closeness to the Caribbean, and its tropicality framed it as a space essentially different from the rest of the United States. Florida in the early 19th century was considered an unstable land: regarded as largely uncultivable, on watery ground, and home to unruly populations, its perceived “disorder” and transitional character made it a space of projection for speculations about the nation’s expansionist ventures. I focus on two particularities of Florida’s topography that highlight its instability and tropicality, the reef and the swamp, and explore their representation in texts by three US American authors: James F. Cooper (Jack Tier), John James Audubon (Ornithological Biographies), and Joshua Giddings (The Exiles of Florida). I argue that all three authors depict Florida as a hemispheric region, and that reefs and swamps become significant symbols in the texts to negotiate issues of nationhood, expansionism, and slavery. The construction of Florida in these texts, however, was guided by the authors’ different agendas and the role they attributed to the peninsula in the expanding nation.

About the Author

Prof. Dr. Gabriele Pisarz- Ramirez (SFB 1199 & Leipzig University)

My research focuses on the cultural processes which link American culture to other cultures or which are situated in between cultures. My doctoral dissertation investigated literary translations of Stephen Crane texts as cultural products at the intersection of literary studies, cultural studies and translation studies. For my Habilitation project, I researched the border zone between the United States and Mexico as a culturally productive space which plays an important role in redefining concepts of nation and national culture. My current research interests are in the fields of 19th century inter-American relations, transnational studies and critical regionalism, Latino/a studies, migration studies, and 21st century concepts of race and ethnicity.