The Atlantic World Research Network

The UNCG Atlantic World Research Network fosters campus-wide interdisciplinary research, teaching, and creative work that reflects on the peoples, cultures, and ecologies of the “Atlantic Rim”—Africa, Europe, and the Americas. The Network will lead in comprehensive, multidisciplinary Atlantic World Studies throughout the southeastern United States, and will bring together scholars in Atlantic World Studies from North America, across the Atlantic Rim, and around the world.

In September 2004, UNCG hosted one of the largest and most successful international, interdisciplinary Atlantic World conferences to date—“Creating Identity and Empire in the Atlantic World: 1492-1888,” keynoted by famed historians Ira Berlin and Barry Gaspar, and by renowned Shakespearean Stephen J. Greenblatt (see 2004 Atlantic World Conference). In fall 2007 and 2008, the AWRN organized two further transatlantic conferences on the poet George Herbert’s life and cultural legacies—the first of these in Salisbury, England (see http://www.uncg.edu/eng/george_herbert/). These three conferences registered a combined attendance of 650, with 73 panels presenting 230 papers, and featured 14 plenary speakers—with four poetry readings, two choral concerts, two rare book displays, two dramatic presentations, one book of published proceedings, and another book in progress. Our conferences have attracted worldwide participation, with registrants from 41 U.S. states, Mexico, Canada, the UK, France, Finland, Iran, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.  

Atlantic World Studies are growing rapidly as a scholarly field around the Atlantic Rim and around the world, and many Atlanticists on our faculty and elsewhere have noted and promoted the continuing emergence of an interdisciplinary Atlantic World emphasis at UNCG. Our “Atlantic World Literacies” conference, being developed for fall 2010, will host another 300 scholars at UNCG for three days.  Paper presentations and keynote addresses will explore the impact of literacies on the Atlantic World before and after Columbian contact (see Conferences.2010.Atlantic World Literacies).

Clearly Atlantic World Studies, though originating in the Humanities, is a field far larger than History or English, Classical Studies or the Romance Languages. As an emerging area of investigation, the Atlantic World encompasses African American Studies, Art, Biology, Broadcast & Cinema, Business Administration, Caribbean Studies, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Classical Studies, Communication Studies, Consumer Apparel and Retail Studies, Dance, Educational Leadership, Environmental Studies, Geography, Library Science, Music, Public Health Education, Theater, and Women’s and Gender Studies—to name the specialties of some of the UNCG colleagues who are supporting and attending our many events.

The Atlantic World Research Network is interdisciplinary without being anti-disciplinary; it is international while exploring the lively creative power of national and local cultures; and it is entrepreneurial, attempting new and sometimes unprecedented things as a vital and forward-looking UNCG seeks new levels of excellence in the community of research and scholarship.