The Atlantic World Research Network
Across Campus |
Since 2003, when the History Department decided to inaugurate its PhD program with Atlantic World among its areas of special interest, programmatic elements of an interdisciplinary UNCG Atlantic World Network have continued to emerge:
--The Wells Lectures in Early American History, which over the past two years have dealt with the Atlantic World topics of slavery and abolition.
--Southern Backcountry—As the only doctoral program in both History and English in the Virginia-North Carolina portion of the old Southern Backcountry, UNCG has been recognized as the headquarters for Backcountry scholarship and home of The Journal of Backcountry Studies.A major finding of recent scholarship has been the Atlantic World penetration of the backcountry.
--In September 2004, UNCG and Old Salem, Inc. sponsored a conference on Public History and the North Carolina Backcountry. Using seven historic sites in Rowan, Guilford, Forsyth, and Stokes Counties as historical texts, Conference speakers dismantled and reassembled these historic places image by image—one brick, stone, and board at a time, helping 125 participants to understand where the past resides in the Piedmont and how at historic places it can come alive.
--Also in September 2004, UNCG’s international conference, "Creating Identity and Empire in the Atlantic World: 1492-1888," co-sponsored by History and English with help from the College, put UNCG on the Atlanticist map by bringing 250 people to hear 120 panelists and 3 outstanding keynoters. (2004.Creating Identity and Empire)
--The English and History Department's collaboration (with Library Special Collections and the School of Music) on two other important "Atlantic World Initiatives": "George Herbert's Pastoral: Poetry and Priesthood, Past and Future," held very successfully in October 2007 in Salisbury, England, and "George Herbert's Travels: International Print and Cultural Legacies," brought over 60 scholars and nearly 200 participants together on October 9-11, 2008 here at UNCG. These conferences—and their published proceedings—explore a whole range of literary, religious, and political transatlantic exchanges over 400 years (see http://www.uncg.edu/eng/george_herbert/).
--Historian Phyllis Hunter’s Spring 2008 Center for Critical Inquiry workshop, "Global Transformations: Cultural Memory and Identity Formation in America and around the World," inspired by the interdisciplinary nature of Atlantic World studies.
--The English Department's Speakers Series sponsors lectures on Transatlantic topics, such as the April 4, 2008 presentation from Kate Flint of Rutgers University, "Modernity, the Native American, and Victorian Britain," and the upcoming March 6, 2009 lecture by Gail McDonald from the University of Southampton, England, “Imaginary Nations: Transatlantic Modernism and Cosmopolitanism.”
--UNCG’s International and Global Studies Committee (IGS) is a multi-disciplinary program that allows students to explore opportunities in the humanities and social sciences from such disciplines as history, anthropology, economics, political science, public health, foreign languages, and sociology. Students will be prepared for careers in business, government, international development agencies, non-governmental organizations, philanthropic agencies and the arts (see http://www.uncg.edu/igs/ ).
Individual Research: Discovering the Discoverers
In addition to these shared programs and initiatives, individual Atlantic-World-related research and creative activities are thriving across campus and across disciplines at UNCG. A survey of current departmental and unit websites throughout the campus reveals that a remarkable range of more than 150 faculty in widely varied disciplines are pursuing projects that address the transatlantic exchange—in the humanities, the social sciences, the natural sciences, and the arts.
An important part of the Atlantic World Research Network’s mission is to increase contact between colleagues across departments and units, bringing them together to relate their work in mutually fruitful ways—in other words, to connect the dots, to discover new constellations of learning. See Atlantic World Lunchtime Colloquia.
For this list of faculty pursuing some form of research or creative activity related to life on and around the Atlantic Rim, please click on Discovering the Discoverers. Here you’ll find more information about Atlantic World research being done across campus, and about how to make contact and find intellectual common ground here at UNCG.