Memory and Community in Early Modern Britain
Lead Research Organisation:
University of East London
Department Name: Humanities and Social Sciences
Abstract
This research network will investigate the relationship between memory and community in early modern Britain (c. 1500-1700). It will focus on the importance of memory in establishing and disrupting the emergent local and national communities and in defining relations between place and community, and it will investigate the connections between individual and collective memory. It will also explore the ways in which this period is remembered today, and how communities of interest may emerge in relation to representations of the past (for example reenactment societies or local heritage initiatives). Through its focus on these ways in which popular memory is kept alive over time, the network will ask how studying the making and unmaking of community in the past can illuminate the processes that affect the formation and experience of community in the present.
The network aims to establish dialogues among individuals and groups working on memory and community in early modern Britain across different academic fields - history, English, archaeology, memory studies. The period was one of rapid and dramatic change. Early modern communities were undergoing transformation and reconstruction, as economic, religious and social change generated new concepts of the nation, reshaped confessional identities, and redefined relations between local and national, urban and rural, rich and poor. Notions of individual identity, and the relation between the self and various wider groupings, from family to nation, were correspondingly reshaped as well. In all these transformations memory played a crucial part: the past was deployed both to establish and to challenge emergent communities. Memory was invoked in the service of competing discourses: for example, to establish national history or common rights; to maintain adherence to the old faith or to reclaim the purity of the early church; to assert ancient lineage or to distribute property amongst descendants. Through a series of four symposia held over two years, the network will explore these various dimensions of memory and community, contributing to a broader understanding of how communities change and develop over time, and of memory as a dynamic social and cultural force.
The network also aims to build connections between academic and non-academic participants. It will focus on the relationship between memory and place in the making of communities, in order to highlight the links between academic research and the uses of memory work in heritage and regeneration activity. It will explore representations of this period in popular culture - such as films, TV serials, and historical novels - in order to enrich our understanding of how we access and give meaning to the past in our everyday lives. It will engage with a number of modern-day organizations and initiatives, both professional and non-professional, in order to explore the ways in which the memory of the early modern period continues to shape notions of community today. Heritage and culture industry professionals, historical novelists, local history groups and reenactment societies, among others, will be invited to participate in symposia and reflect on the meanings of this period in contemporary culture. The symposia and the project website will thus aim to stimulate creative thought about how early modern memory work in different sectors may be used to enrich and sustain the identities of today's communities.
The network aims to establish dialogues among individuals and groups working on memory and community in early modern Britain across different academic fields - history, English, archaeology, memory studies. The period was one of rapid and dramatic change. Early modern communities were undergoing transformation and reconstruction, as economic, religious and social change generated new concepts of the nation, reshaped confessional identities, and redefined relations between local and national, urban and rural, rich and poor. Notions of individual identity, and the relation between the self and various wider groupings, from family to nation, were correspondingly reshaped as well. In all these transformations memory played a crucial part: the past was deployed both to establish and to challenge emergent communities. Memory was invoked in the service of competing discourses: for example, to establish national history or common rights; to maintain adherence to the old faith or to reclaim the purity of the early church; to assert ancient lineage or to distribute property amongst descendants. Through a series of four symposia held over two years, the network will explore these various dimensions of memory and community, contributing to a broader understanding of how communities change and develop over time, and of memory as a dynamic social and cultural force.
The network also aims to build connections between academic and non-academic participants. It will focus on the relationship between memory and place in the making of communities, in order to highlight the links between academic research and the uses of memory work in heritage and regeneration activity. It will explore representations of this period in popular culture - such as films, TV serials, and historical novels - in order to enrich our understanding of how we access and give meaning to the past in our everyday lives. It will engage with a number of modern-day organizations and initiatives, both professional and non-professional, in order to explore the ways in which the memory of the early modern period continues to shape notions of community today. Heritage and culture industry professionals, historical novelists, local history groups and reenactment societies, among others, will be invited to participate in symposia and reflect on the meanings of this period in contemporary culture. The symposia and the project website will thus aim to stimulate creative thought about how early modern memory work in different sectors may be used to enrich and sustain the identities of today's communities.
Planned Impact
Central to this project is an engagement with heritage and culture industry professionals, practitioners and creative artists, participants in local history projects, and members of non-academic groups and societies with an interest in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Each of the four symposia will include local participants from these sectors, and the final symposium will focus specifically on the theme of popular memory and living history. The network will also develop an interactive website which will be a significant resource for non-academic as well as academic users, including a database of resources and bibliographies for early modern memory, and a listing of community and historical groups with an interest in this period. Our aim is to generate mutually beneficial interchanges of reflections on research skills and resources with non-academic researchers, such as novelists, community historians and members of re-enactment groups. We are committed to exchanges which draw on, disseminate and develop the many existing local initiatives and projects; we see the relationship as one of the democratisation of knowledge, which will bring together expertise in many different areas, and offer an overview and synthesis of current activities.
The network will catalyse creative thought about ways in which inter-sector, early modern memory research and activity may be used to benefit future communities and enhance the identities of present communities (with particular application to the four regions initially involved in the network, all of which feature highly on deprivation indices, underpinning the importance of our engagement with local community projects). We will build on existing links and established collaborations (such as the Huyton-with-Roby Historic Society and the Prescot Historic Society) as well as initiating new connections. In addition to the immediate participation of third sector groups, therefore, the research has the potential to make valuable contributions to future initiatives to enhance community cohesion and engagement, and to inform policy-making and community initiatives in these areas.
It will benefit potential users and participants by:
- interacting with local communities to consider their pasts and to reflect on the links between local culture and personal identity, benefiting community cohesion by enabling participants to create further local links and connections
- fostering dialogue with non-academic participants in historical interest groups, thus enriching understanding of the ways in which the early modern period is remembered and reimagined today and initiating future collaborations between potential cross-agency partners
- contributing to community enrichment and the building of intergenerational links through public engagement activities embedded in symposia (for example, open readings and discussion sessions with historical novelists; sessions on family history; re-enactment events such as the Prescot early modern court leet)
- opening dialogues with the third sector in support of innovative and creative practice, promoting an enriched understanding of early modern culture and the place of memory in the wider community to contribute to future projects
- providing an online forum for discussion and information exchange, including resource databases, which will be accessible to members of local community and historical interest groups, improving quality of life by fostering creative and informed engagement with the local and national past.
Benefits during the course of the project will be generated through specific events engaging with community and heritage participants at each symposium, and will continue after the project through the website as a resource for building contacts and providing information, and the potential for development of new collaborations, initiatives and consultations.
The network will catalyse creative thought about ways in which inter-sector, early modern memory research and activity may be used to benefit future communities and enhance the identities of present communities (with particular application to the four regions initially involved in the network, all of which feature highly on deprivation indices, underpinning the importance of our engagement with local community projects). We will build on existing links and established collaborations (such as the Huyton-with-Roby Historic Society and the Prescot Historic Society) as well as initiating new connections. In addition to the immediate participation of third sector groups, therefore, the research has the potential to make valuable contributions to future initiatives to enhance community cohesion and engagement, and to inform policy-making and community initiatives in these areas.
It will benefit potential users and participants by:
- interacting with local communities to consider their pasts and to reflect on the links between local culture and personal identity, benefiting community cohesion by enabling participants to create further local links and connections
- fostering dialogue with non-academic participants in historical interest groups, thus enriching understanding of the ways in which the early modern period is remembered and reimagined today and initiating future collaborations between potential cross-agency partners
- contributing to community enrichment and the building of intergenerational links through public engagement activities embedded in symposia (for example, open readings and discussion sessions with historical novelists; sessions on family history; re-enactment events such as the Prescot early modern court leet)
- opening dialogues with the third sector in support of innovative and creative practice, promoting an enriched understanding of early modern culture and the place of memory in the wider community to contribute to future projects
- providing an online forum for discussion and information exchange, including resource databases, which will be accessible to members of local community and historical interest groups, improving quality of life by fostering creative and informed engagement with the local and national past.
Benefits during the course of the project will be generated through specific events engaging with community and heritage participants at each symposium, and will continue after the project through the website as a resource for building contacts and providing information, and the potential for development of new collaborations, initiatives and consultations.
Organisations
| Description | This network aimed to set up dialogues within and beyond the academy on the workings of memory in early modern communities, and how the memory of this period continues to resonate. It brought together scholars from a range of disciplines, reflecting the importance of memory as a conceptual framework across arts and humanities subjects, along with postgraduate students and heritage professionals and practitioners. Our initial proposal defined a set of objectives in three main areas: intellectual investigation of the complex relation between memory and community in relation to a defined historical period; generating dialogue between academics and non-academics, and fostering future collaborations; and developing a website that would serve as a resource for researchers in this area. In relation to the first, the network was very successful, bringing together many of the foremost scholars in memory research both in the UK and internationally (eg New Zealand, USA, the Netherlands). The quality of presentations was very high, demonstrating the range of innovative and exciting research in this field; the close focus offered by the symposium format generated detailed and thoughtful debate. The academic quality of the network is evidenced in our subsequent successful proposal to the journal Memory Studies for a special issue of selected papers from the project, to be published in January 2018. A. Emergent research themes and questions 1. Modern and premodern memory. Memory in modernity and postmodernity has been identified as intrinsically new: over the last hundred and fifty years, scholars suggest, memory has occupied a new place in the map of the self, and is given new meanings. Our discussions questioned this distinction and considered the extent to which the characteristics of "modern" memory might be found in early modernity as well, while also seeking to emphasise the specificities of early modern memory practices. Modern memory practices also emerged in discussion of the uses of the past for heritage communities today. 2. Memory as cultural practice subject to transformation. Memory is embedded in material objects (clothes, houses, music, memorials) and also in place. However, meanings change even while material objects persist. Can we recreate memories that may once have inhered in an object? How do we read the changing meanings of a place or object that remains an enduring symbol of memory across periods of change? 3. Memory as both binding and threatening communities. The usefulness of oblivion has become increasingly topical in memory studies; where memory serves to define communities against outsiders, an excess of memory may bind both individuals and communities to a destructive past. Early modern subjects locate themselves in communities and in relation to shared pasts, potentially transmitting shared trauma across generations; questions about how such memories are neutralised or not have continuing contemporary salience. Concepts such as trauma require interrogation: is this another 'modern' mode of memory, and can we understand early modern subjects or groups in relation to the psychic structures of trauma? B. Support and professional development for postgraduate students Postgraduate students were actively involved in or employed by the network (or both), in a range of ways: • Representation on steering group • Giving presentations at symposia • Assisting with administration and running of events; developing dedicated webspace for symposia • Developing databases of resources for the study of early modern memory Academic members of the steering group mentored the students in these activities and in preparing presentations and writing up their papers. Around ten students were substantially involved in the project, several of them attending more than one event. They found their participation valuable, developing professional skills, and enjoyable. C. Engagement with non-academic communities As part of our aim to engage with and recognise expertise beyond the academy, participants from different sectors of arts and heritage industries were invited to contribute. This included: • Representation on the steering group (one heritage professional, one mature postgraduate student with extensive museum experience) • Speakers from arts and heritage organisations including: Hoghton Tower Restoration Project; curator of Derby Collection, Knowsley Hall; Flodden Community Eco-Museum; local council buildings restoration and conservation official (KMBC); Prescot Townscape Heritage Initiative (Heritage Lottery funded) • Folk singers and morris dancers in discussion and performance • Presentations from researchers on re-enactment societies and wiccan groups |
| Exploitation Route | We have identified above the next stage in the academic dissemination of our research, via a journal special issue, where an introduction written by members of the steering group will expand on the points highlighted here. Memory Studies is the foremost journal for debates in the field, and this will enable us to share the findings widely with specialists in modern as well as early modern memory. Recognition of the different cultures, ways of working and needs of different heritage sector professionals from those of academics has led to new forms of collaborative working, as exemplified in the activities of Shakespeare North, based in Merseyside. Experience of the Early Modern Memory and Community activities has led to revised forms of collaboration between university-based researchers and planners and community-based partners. Workshop-led meetings of thematic groups allow for more fruitful and focussed collaborations which include more equitable forms of knowledge sharing, relevant to many academic/ heritage partnerships. Shakespeare North aims to submit an application for funding to the AHRC later this year. This will build on experience gained through the Early Modern Memory and Community network project. |
| Sectors | Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| URL | http://memory-earlymodern.org/index.html |
| Description | The work of the network in relation to heritage partnerships is currently being taken forward through the Shakespeare North project, a heritage project which is led by one of the universities involved in the Early Modern Memory and Community network (Liverpool John Moores), and builds on experience and insights gained through the network. This involves collaboration between university-based researchers and planners and community-based partners, based on single-theme collaborations: an archaeology stream; a historic environment workgroup; a contemporary arts and community stream; and an education workstream, for instance. Collaborative work with Knowsley Hall's Derby Collection and archives, developed through one of the EMMC events, has also continued. The symposium and cultural event, 'Shakespeare, the Earls of Derby and the North-West', held in October 2016, was co-organised between Liverpool John Moores (led by Professor Elspeth Graham, one of the steering group for the Early Modern Memory and Community project) and Dr Stephen Lloyd, Curator and Archivist to the Derby Collection and Archive. This collaboration had been rehearsed by Dr Lloyd's inclusion on one of the panels at a EMMC symposium where he spoke about the cultural implications of curating a collection such as that at Knowsley Hall. The event at Knowsley Hall included: a re-enactment performance of the Sir Thomas Salusbury's Masque at Knowsley House, written to be performed for the Earls of Derby at Knowsley Hall in the early 1640s and of a pavane composed by the sixth Earl of Derby, plus a full day of papers by internationally recognised scholars on topics related to the early-modern theatrical cultures of Knowsley. The Symposium part of the event sold out and 120 members of the general public, academics, and cultural influencers invited by the Countess of Derby, attended. In bringing together people from these very different socio-cultural groups the event acted as a trial for a larger project, Shakespeare North. This, in order to succeed, must appeal and give a sense of ownership of the project to a broad range of socio-cultural stakeholders. The work of the EMMC network project has, in this way, been used to develop, even cement, relationships and cultural collaborations which underpin further developing projects. Similarly, in creating dialogues between different academic and heritage industry disciplines, it has opened up ways of speaking to diverse groups of curators, museum specialists, and people involved in many different aspects of heritage-based activity. Through all of these forms of work it has also been possible to experiment with a range of different ways of bringing academic and non-academic audiences - from all parts of the community - together in joint cultural enhancement projects. Update 2019: Findings from the Memory and Community project continue to inform the work being done by the Shakespeare North project, directed by Dr Graham, including further developing the partnership with the V & A and in planning community activities such as re-enacting the Prescot Court Leet which is being prepared for this summer. The building of a reproduction of the sixteenth-century theatre will begin shortly. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2018 |
| Sector | Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural |