Overview

Taking a multidisciplinary approach to the complex cultural exchanges that took place between Britain and America from 1750 to 1900, The Materials of Exchange examines material, visual, and print culture alongside literature within a transatlantic context. The contributors trace the evolution of Anglo-American culture from its origins as a product of the British North Atlantic Empire through to its persistence in the post-Independence world of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While transatlanticism is a well-established field in history and literary studies, this volume recognizes the wider diversity and interactions of transatlantic cultural production across material and visual cultures as well as literature. As such, while encompassing a range of fields and approaches within the humanities, the ten chapters are all concerned with understanding and interpreting the same Anglo-American culture within the same social contexts. The chapters integrate the literary with the material, offering alternative and provocative perspectives on topics ranging from the child-made book to representations of domestic slaves in literature, by way of history painting, travel writing, architecture and political plays. By focusing on cultural exchanges between Britain and the north-eastern maritime United States over nearly two centuries, the collection offers an in-depth study of Britain’s relationship with a single region of North America over an extended historic period. Contributors have resisted the temptation to prioritize the relationship between New England and England in particular by placing this association within the contexts of Atlantic exchanges with other northeastern states as well as with the South, the Caribbean and Scotland. Intended for researchers in literature, visual and material culture, this collection challenges single-subject boundaries by redefining transatlantic studies as the collective examination of the complex and interrelated cultural t

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9781032925677

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Reviews

'The Materials of Exchange between Britain and North East America, 1750-1900, significantly expands our understanding of transatlantic cultural exchange between the U.S. and Britain, both by challenging the U.S.-centeredness of North American Studies and by extending its consideration of cross-cultural transatlantic influence well into the nineteenth century. This book inaugurates a new critical vantage point for reinterpreting the cultural connections between the two countries. It is especially attractive for the way it situates literary readings firmly within material culture contexts, its ample illustrations offering readers a more tactile experience of the goods and ideas being discussed.' Phillip H. Round, University of Iowa, USA ’The inclusion of essays from art history, geography, and architectural history, alongside the more conventional transatlantic literary criticism, demonstrates the editors’ commitment to the inter- or multidisciplinary growth and collaboration within this exciting field of study.’ Journal of Historical Geography '... the edited collection offers an appropriate form for different voices to present perspectives that capture the spirit of heterogeneity, trade and diversity that characterised the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Atlantic world ... all of the ten chapters offer especially fine examples of transatlantic scholarship on the period.' Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies

Author Information

Daniel Maudlin is Associate Professor in Architectural History and Theory and Robin Peel is Associate Professor in English at the University of Plymouth, UK.

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