Separateness and Kinship : Transatlantic Exchanges 1600-1900

自从都铎时期德文郡的捕鱼船队在16世纪晚期开始造访新英格兰海域以来，就存在着跨大西洋网络，支持新英格兰和英国之间的物质、思想和文化交流。普利茅斯和西南地区在这一研究时期开始和结束的几个世纪里在这些交流中发挥了重要的物质和象征作用。1620年，五月花号分离主义者号从普利茅斯起航，而在19世纪，一条跨大西洋电报电缆从英国西南部进入英国。这个新提出的研究网络将研究新英格兰和英国文化之间复杂、不安和矛盾的相互作用，从清教徒时代开始，探索与一个国家的对抗方式，这个国家与另一个国家有着密切的联系，但重要的意识形态差异导致了有时意想不到的反应和发展，令人惊讶和吃惊。该项目将试图回答有关文化分离、差异和亲缘关系这一经常自相矛盾的组合的确切性质、运作和后果的问题。如果清教徒代表分离和分离，而电缆代表连接和结合，那么这两个原则在四个世纪的跨大西洋交流中是如何运作的呢？关于这种互动可以写出什么样的新鲜叙述？在寻求这些问题的答案时，研究将注意到一个关键的意识形态问题，即一种文化将告知其自身民族认同感的假设应用于另一种密切相关但意识形态不同的文化的文化。该网络的专门知识将考虑由分离和亲属关系引起的问题如何在教育、艺术、科学、机构、建筑和国家认同中得到表达。邀请其他研究人员，特别是研究生研究人员，提出关于旧英格兰和新英格兰之间相互作用的新的跨学科基础研究问题，为两个全国性研讨会之一做出贡献，并为将于2010年举行的国际会议提交提案。跨学科的国际方法，将文学研究、艺术史和建筑学结合在一起，将使我们能够从历史和地理以外的角度来比较文化，这些角度以前在这个领域占主导地位，看看是否有特定的文化参与浪潮构成了主导话语，或者是否有一个复杂的混合，新兴的，残余的话语掩盖了任何主导的证据。通过阿默斯特学院的参与，我们将有机会接触到五所学院的大量手稿资源，其中包括新英格兰男女访问英国的日记、信件和报告。这是一种奇妙而丰富的资源。通过在英国举办的研讨会和会议，以及计划成立的新英格兰研究中心（该中心将补充位于新罕布什尔大学的新英格兰文化中心），我们将为就英国和新英格兰之间的文化关系进行重要和持续的对话奠定基础。其目的是建立一个项目，该项目将在两年内完成，但其寿命将远远超过其将获得资助的期限。拟议的出版物显然将超过两年，但也希望这次会议的主题将启发进一步的会议，并在诸如跨大西洋妇女作家会议这样的既定会议上设立特别小组。最后，计划中的网站和中心将成为英国新英格兰研究的催化剂，并进一步提高发展中的大学城的研究形象。

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.