ABSTRACT
Laura Doyle is Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and co-direc-
tor of the World Studies Interdisciplinary Project (WSIP: https://wsipworldstudies.wordpress.
com/). She specializes in interdisciplinary approaches to culture, with a focus on transnational,
cross-racial, and inter-imperial formations. This essay draws from her current book project,
Untold returns. Past publications include Freedom’s empire: Race and the rise of the novel in
Atlantic modernity, 1640-1940; Bordering on the body: The racial matrix of modern fiction
and culture (Perkins Prize); and the edited collections, Bodies of resistance: New phenomenol-
ogies of politics, agency, and culture and (with Laura Winkiel) Geomodernisms: Race, modern-
ism, modernity.
