The Atlantic World Research Network
Graduate Student Research Prizes |
Atlantic World Research Network
Graduate Student Research Prizes—2010-2011 are awarded to the following students:
(prize winners are in alphabetical order)
Daniel Burns: Department of English
“Transnationalizing ‘the Paranoid Style’: On the U.S. Reception of L’insurrection qui vient”
Burns’ project undertakes a transatlantic media reception analysis of anarchist tract L’insurrection qui vient (The Coming Insurrection, 2009) using American cultural theorist Richard Grusin’s concept of “premediation.” Defined as the perpetuation of low levels of fear or anxiety by socially networked media during periods of intensified security, this paradigm anticipates the text’s catalyzing effect on a series of unwarranted arrests by the French government against radical political elements suspected of authoring it. The paper then examines the use of the manifesto’s incendiary rhetoric by conservative U.S. media outlets from a comparative, transnational perspective through controversial pundit Glenn Beck’s review of the tract.
Rae Ann Meriwether: Department of English
“The Sacred Tradition of Solidarity in I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem”
In this chapter, Meriwether analyzes Maryse Condé’s historical novel about the only black woman—a slave originating in Barbados—accused of sorcery in the Salem witch trials. Contemporary critics focus on the exclusivist, violent Puritans, thus concluding that Condé ultimately offers only a negative representation of community. Meriwether challenges these readings by focusing on Tituba as a metonym for a community grounded in voluntary affiliation and collective praxis with multiple oppressed groups (women, Jews, slaves). This form of community opens up our vision of possibilities for productive trans-Atlantic diasporic relationships because it turns away from identity-based communities and instead envisions communities created through collective action and struggle against gendered and racial oppression.
Ian Michie: Department of History
“The Lost Congregation: The Transatlantic Settling of Germans in Backcountry Virginia 1714-1734”
This paper explores the transatlantic network that brought Lutheran and Reformed Calvinist Germans to the backcountry of Virginia in the early eighteenth century. Focusing on connections between colonial officials, entrepreneurs, business agents, religious leaders, and immigrants, the essay identifies a continuity of traditional German religious practices while examining changes brought about by the transatlantic immigration of this particular group of colonists. The work sheds light on non-English immigration to the backcountry of Virginia, illuminating a broader focus on the expansion of Empire by the colonial authority.