“Our Mediterranean: American Adaptations, 1890-1975” explores the use of adaptation to think comparatively about American literary and cultural studies. “Our Mediterranean” refers improbably both to the California coast and the Caribbean, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Worlds. Popularized in the 1890s, the term persists through the 1970s as a keyword in tourism, U.S. public policy, and race-climate theory. This talk examines enduring comparisons to the Mediterranean in the New World.
Susan Gillman is Professor of Literature at UCSC.