Constructions of North American Antiquity in Colonial and Postcolonial Contexts

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Gesa Mackenthun
• Subject Area: European and American Literary and Cultural Studies
• Term: from 2015 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 280410126

The project is situated in the force field between the emergence of a scientific concept of historical time since the beginning of the nineteenth century and the concurrent territorial expansion into the American West. The period in which a geological sense of time gradually succeeded over Christian historical doctrine also witnessed the beginnings of scientific expeditions and research into the geological and archaeological past of the Americas, as well as ethnological studies of Native American traditions. The project contextualizes early American narratives of antiquity - about the original settlement of America, Ice Age migrations, and the rise and decline of ancient American civilizations - within the discursive field of transatlantic intellectual exchange and growing territorial conflict. Today, these narratives undergo fascinating new variations in the light of global climate change and renewed territorial interests in the Arctic regions. Next to a hemispherically conceived monograph covering constructions of American antiquity between the 1840s and today's indigenous literatures, the project also includes a case study on the Pacific Northwest which brings together narratives of geographical and geological exploration with indigenous oral memories of cataclysmic geological events in the distant past. It also explores the coloniality of transcultural knowledge formation in documenting these memories. A website shall increase the circulation of historical knowledge about the events of American and transatlantic antiquity and critically reflect its contested status in current debates.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants