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RICE UNIVERSITY Sacred Geographies: Religion, Race, and the Holy Land in U.S. Literature, 1819-1920 by Molly K. Robey A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE Doctor of Philosophy APPROVED THESIS COMMITTEE: CarolineField Levander, Director, Professor pf English Robert Patten, Lynelte S7 Au^ey ProfegsoY in Humanities and Professor of Efigjjjsh Anthony Pinn, Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and Professor of Religious Studies Ussama Makdisi, Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair in Arabic Studies and Associate Professor of History HOUSTON, TEXAS MAY 2009 UMI Number: 3362392 INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI® UMI Microform 3362392 Copyright 2009 by ProQuest LLC All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ABSTRACT Sacred Geographies: Religion, Race, and the Holy Land in U.S. Literature, 1819-1920 by Molly K. Robey This dissertation explores how representations of the Holy Land shaped nineteenth-century Americans' conceptions of racial identity in the emerging United States. In the nineteenth century, Americans physically encountered Palestine for the first time, exploring, mapping, and essentially inventing the Holy Land during a century of U.S. nation-building, expansion, and imperialism. "Sacred Geographies" reveals how the Holy Land provided a durable and fertile resource for writers wrestling with the place of race in the burgeoning nation. Analyzing a variety of "national" writings, including frontier romances, Gothic tales, slave narratives, and domestic novels, I demonstrate U.S. writers' engagement with a rapidly growing Holy Land industry. Attention to this often overlooked fascination with the Holy Land highlights the interdependence of racial and religious histories in U.S. culture. By examining the Holy Land's fundamental impact on U.S. perceptions of racial and national belonging, "Sacred Geographies" exposes the flexibility of the racial categories used to constitute U.S. culture, and it demonstrates the vital role religious identity played in the development of U.S. racial ideologies. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For their challenging questions and consistent encouragement, I would like to thank my advisors: Caroline Levander, Robert Patten, Anthony Pinn, and Ussama Makdisi. I am grateful for their enthusiasm for the project and their rigorous analyses of the material. I would also like to express my gratitude for the generous support provided by the Rice University President's office, the Rice University English Department, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. In the final stages of writing this dissertation, a Leticia Stockbridge Vaughn Fellowship awarded by Rice University allowed me to devote my attention wholly to the project. In addition, a fellowship in the History of Cartography awarded by the Newberry Library enabled me to spend a summer in Chicago, researching geographical representations of the Near East. I would like to offer a special thanks to Jim Akerman, the director of the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography at the Newberry Library, who helped me learn to read maps and guided me through the library's extensive collection of geography textbooks and atlases. I will be eternally indebted to the various groups and individuals who formed my intellectual community during my graduate school years. The lively conversations that took place across disciplines at the Americas Colloquium decisively shaped my research. As I began writing, I received useful criticisms and suggestions from my fellow participants in the Mellon Research Seminar on Hemispheric American Study, directed by Caroline Levander. My classmates, V Gale Kenny, Cory Ledoux, David Messmer, Liz Fenton, and Ben Wise, provided helpful feedback and lasting friendship for which I am deeply appreciative. Lilian Crutchfield too deserves thanks for her astute assessments of my writing in recent years. I would also like to express my gratitude to Timothy Marr, one of the Mellon Seminar's invited guests, who continues to offer invaluable guidance and Support. As I finished this dissertation, the Illinois Wesleyan University English and Religion Departments provided me with a home away from home. I offer my sincere thanks to Kevin Sullivan, Andrew Smith, Joanne Diaz, and Jason Moralee for their sage advice as I completed this project. A number of personal relationships have sustained me through the dissertation writing process, and for these relationships I am profoundly grateful. Melissa Merz and Kate Buckley listened to my grumblings with endless patience and good cheer. Sawyer provided companionship during our morning walks and distraction the rest of the day. The Robeys were there, as always, to encourage me, or put me in my place whenever it was required. Laura, Joanna, Melanie, and James remain my most ardent supporters. Though William Robey is no longer with us, his influence can be felt throughout this dissertation. Finally, I thank Robert Erlewine for his unwavering faith. CONTENTS Introduction: Critical Coordinates 1 1 "Citizens of the New Jerusalem": Frontier Fictions and the American New Israel 40 2 Eschatology and the Arabesque: Poe, Prophecy, and the Topography of Race 89 3 The New (African) American Israel: Holy Land Mania, Martin Delany, and the Black Nationalist Mission 133 4 Homes Divided: Domesticity, Distress, and the Islamic Other 186 5 Evangelical Empire: The Sacred Geographies of Mark Twain's Following the Equator 230 Conclusion: The Holy Land Experience 266 Bibliography 279 1 INTRODUCTION Critical Coordinates In June 2008, I arrived in Chicago, Illinois just in time to see the city embroiled in geographical pandemonium. The city's year long "Festival of Maps," a seemingly innocuous celebration of two-dimensional spatial representations, had suddenly and unexpectedly erupted in controversy. The cause of the controversy was a new exhibit at the Spertus Museum, an institution dedicated to exploring Jewish life and culture. The exhibit, entitled "Imaginary Coordinates," brought together various maps of the region now known as the Middle East. These maps spanned ancient though contemporary periods and represented a variety of religious and cultural perspectives, including Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Israeli, and Palestinian viewpoints. According to the Spertus website, the exhibit was "inspired by antique maps of the Holy Land" and sought to "juxtapose these maps with modern and contemporary maps of the region" and "objects of material culture and artworks" as a means of "charting new spaces, fostering conversation, and imaging new communities."1 Apparently, the people of Chicago were not interested in the new spaces charted, the conversations fostered, or the new communities imagined by "Imaginary Coordinates." Almost immediately after the exhibit opened, it became the subject of contentious debate in Chicago, and the exhibit was forced to close 2 temporarily. Although the Spertus issued statements claiming the closing was due to structural and lighting problems, the Chicago Tribune reported that the closing was the result of pressure from the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago and major donors who threatened to withdraw their support from the museum.2 What was so surprising about the uproar caused by the exhibition was that it was not the calculatedly provocative artworks on display—for instance, a video piece entitled "Barbed Hula," which aimed to draw attention to Palestinian oppression—that caused some Chicagoans' public outrage. It was the maps. Visitors apparently took issue with the museum's depiction of maps of the Middle East as "products of memory and spiritual imagination."3 What offended viewers was the idea that a map may not be an objective visual record, but instead may be a narrative text shaped by feelings and desires.4 The maps on display at the Spertus depicted differing and even contradictory narratives about the space alternately called the Holy Land, the Near East, Palestine, and Israel. Many visitors felt this very diversity of spatial narratives presented a direct criticism of the modern state of Israel. After briefly reopening on a limited basis, the exhibition was shut down permanently on June 20, 2008. I mention this Chicago controversy not because it demonstrates that many Americans are invested in the Middle East and in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict specifically, but because it suggests that geographical representations of Palestine and Israel serve an important function in discussions of U.S. national identity and of Americans' conceptions of the place of the United States in the 3 world. Critics of "Imaginary Coordinates" understood the exhibit's presentation of geographical images as akin to a statement of international policy. The intense reaction provoked by "Imaginary Coordinates" makes increasing sense when we think about how images of Israel and Palestine have figured prominently in articulations