Separateness and Kinship : Transatlantic Exchanges 1600-1900

自从16世纪末，都铎王朝的德文郡渔船船队开始访问新英格兰近海以来，大西洋两岸一直存在着支持新英格兰和不列颠之间物质、思想和文化交流的网络。在开始和结束这段研究性研究的几个世纪里，普利茅斯和西南部在这些交流中发挥了重要的物质和象征作用。1620年，五月花分离主义分子从普利茅斯启航，而在19世纪，一条横跨大西洋的电报电缆进入了西南部的英国。这个拟议的新研究网络将研究新英格兰和英国文化之间复杂、不安和矛盾的互动，从清教徒之父时代开始，探索与一个彼此都有密切联系但存在重要意识形态差异的国家的对抗如何导致反应和发展，有时是出人意料的、令人惊讶的和令人震惊的。该项目将寻求回答有关这种常常自相矛盾的文化隔离、差异和血缘关系的组合的确切性质、运作和后果的问题。如果朝圣者之父代表分离和割裂，以及连接和连接的电缆，那么这两个原则是如何在跨越四个世纪的大西洋两岸的交流中运作的？关于这种互动，可以写出什么样的新鲜叙事？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，即一种文化将告知自己国家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。该网络的专门知识将考虑因分离和亲属关系而产生的问题如何在教育、艺术、科学、机构、建筑和国家认同中得到体现。将邀请其他研究人员，特别是研究生研究人员，就旧英格兰和新英格兰之间的互动提出新的跨学科基础研究问题，为两个全国性研讨会之一作出贡献，并为2010年举行的一次国际会议提出建议。跨学科的国际方法，将文学研究、艺术史和建筑结合在一起，将使我们能够从不同于以前主导该领域的历史和地理的角度来比较文化，看看是否存在构成主导话语的特定文化参与浪潮，或者是否存在新兴话语和残余话语的复杂混合，掩盖了主导话语的任何证据。通过阿默斯特学院的参与，我们将获得这五所学院丰富的手稿资源，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。通过以英格兰为基地的研讨会和会议，以及计划中的新英格兰研究中心，它将补充设在新汉普郡大学的新英格兰文化中心，我们将为关于英国和新英格兰之间的文化关系的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金的期限。拟议的出版物显然将延续到两年之后，但也希望会议的主题将激励更多的会议，以及关于诸如跨大西洋女作家会议等现有会议的特别小组。最后，拟议的网站和中心将成为英国新英格兰研究的催化剂，并进一步提升一个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.