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Our time is marked by regained interest in the region, explained as a response to immigration, globalisation, and identified with (eth)nostalgia and political populism. By contrast, scholarship on the 19th- and early 20th-century region has interpreted local colour, the region’s cultural representations and the literature which recorded the folklore and customs of its people, through the lens of nation building and nationalism. As such, studies have overlooked fundamental transnational dimensions of local colour, in its themes and representations, the circulation of local colour imagery and narratives across and beyond Europe, and its engagement with transnational audiences, through periodical reprints or as translations. Redefining the Region aims to examine these unexplored transnational dimensions of local colour, by studying media representations of regions and local colour fiction from the long 19th century in European and transatlantic frameworks. These materials provide unique case studies for transnational approaches: images and texts about European regions reached transnational audiences through emerging periodical cultures, dissemination of local colour fiction across Europe, and transcultural networks with North-American diasporic communities. Therefore, this project will yield groundbreaking knowledge about how past and present conceptions of the region are intertwined with negotiations of multiculturalism and globalisation. This will expand understandings of processes of identity/community construction. The project’s objectives are: 1) examining portrayals of regional-transnational dynamics (foreigners, emigrants) in illustrated periodicals and local colour fiction; 2) researching the transnational circulation and reception of European local colour imagery, reports, fiction; 3) exploring the reconstruction of European regions by the media and local colour writers across the Atlantic. Combining methodologies from identity, gender, diaspora/migration, reception studies, the project will additionally refine our knowledge of processes of cultural transfer and of the role of diasporic communities in cultural production and identity formation. The project will develop a searchable, digital repository, educational resources and virtual exhibition.
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