Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - TIDE (Travel, Transculturality and Identity in England, c.1550 – 1700)

Teaser

The central research question for this project is: how did mobility in the great age of travel and discovery (c.1550–1700) shape English perceptions of human identity based on cultural identification and difference, and how did literature facilitate and resist such...

Summary

The central research question for this project is: how did mobility in the great age of travel and discovery (c.1550–1700) shape English perceptions of human identity based on cultural identification and difference, and how did literature facilitate and resist such categorisations? The role of those marked by transcultural mobility was central to this period. Trade and politics, religious schisms, shifts in legal systems, all attempted to control and formalise the identity of such figures. Our current world is all too familiar with the concepts that surfaced or evolved as a result: ‘foreigners’, ‘strangers’, ‘aliens’, ‘converts’, ‘exiles’, or even ‘translators’, ‘ambassadors’ and ‘go-betweens’. There is an urgent need to consolidate our fragmented understanding of this crucial issue, which continues to shape current debates. TIDE offers a direct and timely response to this challenge, combining established methodologies with a set of ambitious and innovative approaches. By bringing together four discrete yet interconnected discourses that tackled the fraught question of human identity in this era (trade and diplomacy, law and governance, religion and ethnography, and literature), it has opened up a new perspective on cross-cultural encounters. TIDE research puts pressure on our understanding of cultural difference, transculturality and identity, and has generated a new understanding of key terms, concepts, and debates in both scientific and public domains. It is producing new knowledge about the unique role played by literature, and breaking fresh ground through the combination of academic research with new writing.

Work performed

All the undertakings indicated in the Grant Agreement Annex 1 (DoA) for Years 1-3 have proceeded as planned and on schedule, along with substantial additional activities. The primary deliverable in this period was an online, open access resource, TIDE: Keywords (http://www.tideproject.uk/keywords-home/), consisting of 38 collaboratively written essays (c.120,000 words) by the project team. This major publication was completed on schedule at the end of Year 1 and had a public launch on 9 May 2018. It is contracted to be published in print form by Arc Humanities Press in 2019. We have also had a successful series of seminars with visiting speakers, as well as a major 3-day international, multi-disciplinary conference in July 2018. Case studies are progressing on schedule, 2 monographs by the team are under contract, and the project’s work has also attracted significant interest from the general public and other sectors. Examples of these include invitations to collaborate with the non-profit policy think-tank, The Runnymede Trust, on influencing the teaching of migration and identity related topics in UK-wide school-level education, invitation to advise the Liverpool World Museum on their planned restructuring of museum displays, and multiple tv and radio programmes by the PI for the BBC.

Final results

The relationship between transculturality and identity covers a vast and complex territory that our discipline-boundedness stops us from scanning, and connections as well as fault lines disappear from view when we focus on singular phenomena and single groups. Understanding transculturality invites a wider and more interconnected view, tracing influences and interactions across discourses and communities. TIDE’s cohesive yet complex methodological approach is a distinct response to this challenge, and has a unique urgency in the present climate, when debates about the rights and identities of displaced peoples, nations and groups rage not only in Europe but across the world. TIDE is opening a new perspective on cross-cultural encounters by (1) emphasising cultural mobility and encounter in a field that tends to be framed predominantly in terms of cultural clash and boundaries, (2) producing a new understanding of relevant key terms, concepts, debates and examples, and (3) bringing together not only specialist expertise from multiple disciplines, but also acquiring the participation of major contemporary writers and poets, who have helped to open up a new, urgent, and highly relevant place of dialogue between literary-historical research and contemporary developments in literature and culture around issues of identity and migration.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.tideproject.uk.