“European Cultural Studies and the American University”

How does the investigation of European culture transmit a way of knowing the world? I propose to explore this question in two different but related ways. The example of Brexit illustrates the first issue, the rapid changes taking place in the idea of European culture. In her book Britons, historian Linda Colley argued that “the factors that provided for the forging of the British nation in the past have largely ceased to practice.” Absent these influences, Britons look to either a multicultural future or an imagined past to define themselves. The English Channel, always both a barrier and a highway, symbolized the contrasting views of immigration in this debate. From the specter of a fortified frontier in Ireland, to a resurgent Scottish national identity, the cultural implications of Brexit will shape the new, potentially less “United” Kingdom alongside political and economic factors.

The question of cultural transmission raises the issue of how American universities engage with the study of Europe. The programs for recent CES conferences bristle with panels on politics and economics, but feature far less research on culture. As the co-director of the Transnational European Studies program at the University of Georgia, I seek connections between the contemporary and the historical. The study of Brexit, for example, allows for an examination of Britain’s changing demographics, its place in Western society, and its history from the Jacobites to the Troubles – all subjects with resonances in the U.S. context.