The ongoing interdependence between the United Kingdom and the United States dates back further than the "Special Relationship" popularized by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1946. In the early decades of their independence, the United States maintained strong cultural ties with the United Kingdom (cf. ‘So dominant has British culture been in America, north of the Rio Grande, from the seventeenth century to the present, that if somehow the British elements could be eliminated from all the cultural patterns of the United States—Why, Americans would be left with no coherent culture in public or in private life’, Russell Kirk, America’s British Culture, 1993, p.1). They then gradually sought to distance themselves from British influence (Kariann Akemi Yokota, Unbecoming British: How Revolutionary America Became a Postcolonial Nation, 2011) before, once again, drawing closer together during the Great Rapprochement (1895-1915).

In diplomatic terms, the United States' detachment from the European continent and the British Isles is reflected in the Monroe Doctrine, issued by President James Monroe in 1823, which condemns any European intervention in the affairs of the Americas and vice versa. While this declaration was essentially political, what was its impact at a cultural level? What consequences did it have on the arts and literature? What were the reciprocal influences and what forms did they take? Were these influences lasting, and in which artistic fields in particular? Was there a golden age and a decline in British influence in the United States? What remains today of these cultural links? Do they vary according to artistic fields? Finally, to what extent have cultural exchanges contributed to shaping or redefining American and British identities?

Depending on the period, these representations vary between mutual fascination and distrust (‘How was it that by the turn of the twentieth century, Britons had come to fear Americanization, when for much of the nineteenth US citizens feared Anglicization?’, Steven Tuffnell, Made in Britain, 2020, p.1). How do the arts (popular/classical music, painting, architecture, etc.) and literature convey the ambivalence of distancing oneself from British or American influence while not rejecting it entirely?

What is more, in America and Britain, multicultural societies with colonial, slave and diasporic (Hispanic, Italian, Irish, Polish, Jewish, etc.) heritage, what remains of the 'special relationship' in literature and the arts today? How might the economic context (such as the financing of a film, or co-production more generally) explain certain cultural exchanges (British actors in an American production and vice versa, for instance)?

This conference will therefore address the questions raised above and will also cover, but not exclusively, the following themes:

• Myths and realities of transatlantic relations
• Cultural economics of transatlantic transfers
• Influence of transfers on American or British language
• Transfers and translation
• Aspects of mutual influence/fascination
• Why and how this fascination leads writers, poets, filmmakers, and artists from the USA or the UK to live and work in the United States or the United Kingdom (Henry James, T.S. Eliot, Scott Walker, Jacob Epstein, W.H. Auden, Alfred Hitchcock, Charles Chaplin, Gervese Wheeler, to name just a few) or to be influenced by one of the two countries, as illustrated in literature, with some English authors who write ‘American’novels (Lee Child, for example) and vice versa (we can also mention Elizabeth George ("Inspector Lynley") or Diana Gabaldon, who writes Scottish novels like the Outlander series).
• Perceptions and receptions in transcultural exchanges
• The role and form of parody and pastiche in these transfers? For example, A Spinal Tap is an American parody of an English rock band
• In music, how American rock influences / has influenced English rock and vice versa; what about musicals? etc.

Proposals (in English or French; maximum 300 words) should be sent to Jean-Philippe Heberlé (jean-philippe.heberle@univ-lorraine.fr), Claire McKeown (claire.mckeown@univ-lorraine.fr), and Céline Sabiron (celine.sabiron@univ-lorraine.fr) by the 20th February 2025.