Separateness and Kinship : Transatlantic Exchanges 1600-1900

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Ever since the Tudor fishing fleets of Devon began to visit the waters off New England in the late sixteenth century there have existed transatlantic networks supporting material, ideological and cultural exchanges between New England and Britain. Plymouth and the South West have play both an important material and symbolic role in these exchanges in the centuries which begin and end this period of research study. In 1620 the Mayflower Separatists sailed from Plymouth, while in the nineteenth century a transatlantic telegraph cable entered Britain in the South West. This proposed new research network will examine the complex, uneasy and paradoxical interactions between the cultures of New England and Britain from the time of the Pilgrim Fathers onwards, exploring ways in which confrontations with a country with which the other had both close ties but important ideological differences resulted in responses and developments which were sometimes unexpected, surprising and startling. The project will seek to answer questions about the precise nature, operation and consequences of this often paradoxical combination of cultural separation, difference and and kinship. If the Pilgrim Fathers stand for separation and severance, and the cable for connection and conjunction, how do these two principles operate in transatlantic exchanges across four centuries? What kind of fresh narratives can be written about this interaction? In seeking answer to these questions the research will be mindful of a key ideological issue, whereby a culture applies assumptions which inform its own sense of national identity to the culture of another closely related but ideologically different culture. The specific expertise of the network will consider how issues arising from separation and kinship found expression in education, art, science, institutions, architecture and national identity. Invitations will be extended to other researchers, especially postgraduate researchers, to pose new, intedisciplinary grounded research questions about the interaction between the old England and new, to contribute to one of two nationally based seminars, and to submit proposals for an international conference to be held in 2010. The inter-disciplinary international approach, drawing together literary studies, art history, and architecture, will allow us to compare cultural from perspectives other than those of history and geography which have previously dominated this field, to see whether there are specific waves of cultural engagement which constitute a dominant discourse, or whether there is a complex mixture of emergent, and residual discourses masking any evidence of dominance. Through the involvement of Amherst College we shall have access to the extensive manuscript resources of the Five Colleges, which include diaries, letters and reports of New England men and women who made visits to Britain. This is a wonderful and rich resource. Through the seminar and conference based in England, and the planned Centre for New England Studies which will complement the Center for New England Culture based at the University of New Hampshire, we shall have the basis for an important and continuing dialogue on the cultural relationship between Britain and New England. The intention is to establish a project which will be completed within two years, but will have a life well beyond the period for which it will be funded. The proposed publications will clearly extend beyond the two years, but it is also hoped that the theme of the conference will inspire further conferences, and special panels on such established conferences as the Transatlantic Women Writers conference. Finally it is the intention that the proposed website and Centre will act as a catalyst for New England Studies in the UK and raise further the research profile of a developing university city.