Anglophone Cultures and History

The Anglophone Cultures and History Research Area is devoted to the study of British and American Cultures and is divided into two complementary strands: Research Strand A) Culture, Science and the Media and Research Strand B) American Intersections.

Strand A) (convener: Gabriela Gândara Terenas) Due, in part, to the growing interest in projects involving the relationships between Life Sciences and Social Sciences, the activities of this strand address and foster the examination of the multiple links between Science and the Humanities from an intercultural perspective. On the one hand, the scientific method (empirical) has frequently been employed in humanistic studies, whilst scientific themes have always inspired poets, novelists, artists and film directors. On the other, scientists often make use of narrative discourse or visual techniques to disseminate their new discoveries. Thus the research members confront and compare scientific and humanistic discourses also studying the different strategies employed in the representation, dissemination and popularisation of science, particularly in fictional narratives as well as in the Arts, attempting, in this way, to establish how far the comparison of different forms of discursivity can contribute towards the study of the history of science, visual culture and literature, in nineteenth, twentieth and twentieth-first-century Anglophone countries. The members of the Project group have therefore raised certain issues for discussion: will the future of the Humanities depend inevitably upon an approximation to Life Sciences? What will be the role of specialists in Social and Human Sciences in the interpretation, understanding and dissemination of scientific discoveries? What are the advantages of the inclusion of the Humanities in scientific debates and of the inclusion of Science in debates on Literature and Visual Culture? At the same time the research strand studies the relationship between literature and different forms of contemporary media, namely television, cinema and new media. This implies the development of other fields of research, such as the role played by a set of television series produced by the BBC as strong canonical propagators of Anglophone culture; the importance of television, in general, as propagator of Anglophone literature and culture; the implications of the dynamic relationship between Anglophone literature and cinema; and the role of transmedia storytelling as representation of various storyworlds through multiple media and to diverse audiences within Anglophone cultures. Researchers will approach selected texts, from traditional literature to contemporary media, including novels, short stories, plays, films, television productions, graphic novels and digital literature as interconnected arenas of human experience and culture.

Strand B)  (convener: Teresa Botelho) aims to advance the understanding of cultural realities in the United States from a broad thematic and interdisciplinary perspective, examining how questions of place, identity and transnational interdependencies intersect in the mapping of the ever-changing and multilayered American imaginary.