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Full-Text Articles in American Studies
South Asia In The Margins Of Nineteenth-Century American Literature: Missionaries, Transcendentalists, And Indian Travelers In America, Brian Yothers
South Asia In The Margins Of Nineteenth-Century American Literature: Missionaries, Transcendentalists, And Indian Travelers In America, Brian Yothers
Brian Yothers
This essay discusses the broad presence of representations of South Asia in nineteenth-century American literature, from little-known missionary narratives to canonical work by Melville, Thoreau, Emerson, and Fuller.
The Seven Spices: Pumpkins, Puritans, And Pathogens In Colonial New England, Michael Sharbaugh
The Seven Spices: Pumpkins, Puritans, And Pathogens In Colonial New England, Michael Sharbaugh
Michael D Sharbaugh
Water sources in the United States' New England region are laden with arsenic. Particularly during North America's colonial period--prior to modern filtration processes--arsenic would make it into the colonists' drinking water. In this article, which evokes the biocultural evolution paradigm, it is argued that colonists offset health risks from the contaminant (arsenic poisoning) by ingesting copious amounts of seven spices--cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, cardamom, allspice, vanilla, and ginger. The inclusion of these spices in fall and winter recipes that hail from New England would therefore explain why many Americans associate them not only with the region, but with Thanksgiving and Christmas, …