University Press of New England The Genius of Place: The Geographic Imagination in the Early Republic (New England in the World)

Review "Well-researched and supported by perceptive close readings throughout, The Genius of Place convincingly illuminates the powerful role that locality played in early US literature and nationalism."― ALH Online Review XVIII Product Description The Genius of Place examines how, after the War of 1812, concerns about the scale of the nation resulted in a fundamental reorientation of American identity away from the Atlantic or global ties that held sway in the early republic and toward more localized forms of identification. Instead of addressing the sweep of the nation, American authors, artists, geographers, and politicians shifted from the larger reach of the globe to the more manageable scope of the local and sectional. Paradoxically, that local representation became the primary mode through which early Americans construed their emerging national identity. This newfound cultural obsession with locality impacted the literary consolidation and representation of key American imagined places―New England, the plantation, the West―in the decades between 1816 and 1836. Apap’s examination of the intersections between local and national representations and exploration of the myths of space and place that shaped U.S. identity through the nineteenth century will appeal to a broad, interdisciplinary readership. About the Author CHRISTOPHER C. APAP teaches English literature at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan.