Book Launch: Ralph Bauer and Peter Hulme

Join us to celebrate recent publications by Ralph Bauer and Peter Hulme. The two will discuss their books, described below.

Ralph Bauer:

• The Alchemy of Conquest: Science, Religion, and the Secrets of the New World (University of Virginia Press, 2019). Link to publisher's website: "The Age of the Discovery of the Americas was concurrent with the Age of Discovery in science. In The Alchemy of Conquest, Ralph Bauer explores the historical relationship between the two, focusing on the connections between religion and science in the Spanish, English, and French literatures about the Americas during the early modern period. As sailors, conquerors, travelers, and missionaries were exploring "new worlds," and claiming ownership of them, early modern men of science redefined what it means to "discover" something. Bauer explores the role that the verbal, conceptual, and visual language of alchemy played in the literature of the discovery of the Americas and in the rise of an early modern paradigm of discovery in both science and international law." 

Peter Hulme

• The Dinner at Gonfarone's: Salomón de la Selva and His Pan-American Project in Nueva York, 1915-1919 (Liverpool University Press, 2019). Link to publisher's website: "The Dinner at Gonfarone’s is organised as a partial biography, covering five years in the life of the young Nicaraguan poet, Salomón de la Selva, but it also offers a literary geography of Hispanic New York (Nueva York) in the turbulent years around the First World War. De la Selva is of interest because he stands as the largely unacknowledged precursor of Latino writers like Junot Díaz and Julia Álvarez, writing the first book of poetry in English by an Hispanic author. In addition, through what he called his pan-American project, de la Selva brought together in New York writers from all over the American continent. He put the idea of trans-American literature into practice long before the concept was articulated."