Dictionary of Transatlantic Cultural History 18th-21st cent. – Transatlantic Cultures

Transatlantic Cultures aims at developing an interconnected history of the contemporary Atlantic Area using the new possibilities offered by the digital support. Led by French and Brazilian teams, the project will bring together a vast network of European, American and African researchers around four major scientific objectives:
1. Promoting a cultural history that transcends national borders and includes contributions from other scientific disciplines (anthropology, cultural sociology, comparative literature, theatre studies, musicology, visual studies, cultural geography).
2. Analyzing the circulation of knowledge, objects and cultural practices within the Atlantic Area starting from concrete case studies (actors of the cultural exchange, networks of production and distribution, material supports, sites and zones of contact).
3. Rethinking the cultural geography of the Atlantic Area so as to break with the old pattern opposing a center (European or North American) to the periphery (African and South American); foregrounding the phenomena of circularity and identifying the different spaces of transatlantic circulation (North Atlantic but also South Atlantic and Black Atlantic).
4. Integrating the contributions of digital humanities in order to measure, map and analyze cultural circulations.
From a technical point of view, the Dictionary of Transatlantic Cultural History will benefit from the support of TGIR Huma-Num, that will ensure a sustainable digital broadcasting of the data. This digital encyclopaedia will combine levels of reading (thematic, spatial, temporal) thus enabling both a concrete and a global analysis (detailed entries vs. comparisons, connections, quantitative analysis of cultural flows, cartographic tools) of the cultural and cross-cultural formation of the Atlantic Area.

Transatlantic Cultures will develop an innovative scientific and technical tool for the analysis of cultural circulations in the Atlantic Area. Written by specialists in a clear and accessible language, the Dictionary of Transatlantic Cultural History will be available online, free of charge. Translated into four languages, it will promote the exchanges within the international scientific community even as it offers interactive modules intended for teaching and for the public at large.
The benefits of Transatlantic Cultures are first and foremost scientific. The project will develop a new approach to transatlantic cultural history owing to the participation of a vast network of researchers from Europe, Africa and the Americas. The breadth of the topics and of the spaces envisaged, the multiple combinations allowed by the exploitation system (dictionary entries by country, by theme, by period, etc.) and the realization of a cultural cartography of the Atlantic Area will constitute major advances in terms of scientific research.
Transatlantic Cultures also contains a substantial social and educational dimension. The detailed entries, the maps and the audio-visual documents of the Dictionary of Transatlantic Cultural History will provide the public at large with keys to understanding the stakes at work in cultural globalization. By insisting on the early circulation and exchanges within the Atlantic Area, Transatlantic Cultures also intends to fight against the multiple aspects of isolationism and rejection of ethnic and cultural diversity at work in contemporary societies while pursuing a critical examination of hierarchies and cultural imperialisms.
From a strategic point of view, the benefits of the project will be substantial. Through a tight collaboration between the French and the Brazilian teams, Transatlantic Cultures will reinforce the scientific cooperation in the field of social sciences and humanities.

In progress

In progress

Transcultur@ is a joint research project led by a Franco-Brazilian team of scholars in the humanities and social sciences. Its purpose is to develop an online Dictionary of Transatlantic Cultural History to be published in four languages: English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. This encyclopaedia is conceived as an innovative scientific and technological tool for analyzing the cultural dynamics of the Atlantic Area and its central role in the contemporary process of globalization.
The project aims at presenting an interconnected history of the Atlantic Area since the 18th century via a collection of analytical essays exploring the cultural relations between Europe, Africa and the Americas. The project necessarily implies a multidisciplinary approach involving historians, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, musicologists, or specialists of literature, the visual arts, drama and cinema. Reflecting the most recent research and debates, the dictionary engages the question of transatlantic circulations and cultural globalization as well as the process of identification and the role of borders in the creation and the reshaping of major cultural areas since the 18th century.
Supported by the TGIR Huma-Num, Transcultur@ aims at promoting digital humanities in order to measure, map out and analyze transnational cultural circulations in the Atlantic Area. The project will be led by three main partners: the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, the Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3 University, and the University of São Paulo.