by Agostino Brunias, c1780
Yale Center for British Art
Leonora Sansay lived through the last chaotic years of the Haitian Revolution – but the book she wrote about it would tell an entirely unexpected story.
Join returning guest Dr. Maria Windell as we explore the fascinatingly “messy-complicated” life of novelist Leonora Sansay – and uncover a fascinating link with “almost-Founding Father” (and 21st century Broadway icon) …Vice President Aaron Burr?
The text of Sansay’s novel Secret History is also available free on Project Gutenberg.
portrait by John Vanderlyn, 1801
New York Historical Society
portrait by H. Boisselier
Musée de l’Armée, Paris
Maria A. Windell is Associate Professor of English at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she teaches classes on ethnic and early US literatures. Her research focuses on intersections between the US and the Americas, and her first book, Transamerican Sentimentalism and Nineteenth-Century US Literary History, examines how nineteenth-century authors used the popular genre of sentimentalism to position the US in relation to Mexico and the Caribbean. She is currently working on a book about race, gender, and empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth-century Americas.
Music featured in this episode included:
“Ayida Pas Nan Bètise,” “Ce Moin Ayida,” and “Climbing Goat Mountain” from the Global Jukebox
“Our Volunteers Waltz,” “The Coquette” and “Rifle Regiment” performed by the United States Marine Band
“English Country Garden” by Aaron Kenny
“Grave Matters” by Kevin MacLeod
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Episode 161 Leonora Sansay
