Same roots, different routes: stories of Palatine heritage & homemaking in Irish and American post-migration landscapes

Palatinate, Germany, spring of 1709: an unprecedently large mass of people leave home in the hopes of reaching the riches and opportunities of the New World. After months of journeying down the Rhine and waiting in makeshift camps around London, some are selected to cross the Atlantic, while others are shipped to other British colonies in Ireland. Upon arrival, a foreign landscape unfolds before their eyes, only vaguely reminiscent of the famously lush viticultural lands they reluctantly left behind in the midst of devastation and poverty.  

County Limerick, Ireland, summer of 2023: a kitchen garden, an overgrown cider press, an oddly shaped well, vines on the side of a wall.  
 
New York State, USA, autumn of 2023: A Dutch barn, fragments of a blue-on-gray ceramic pitcher, a house built into a hillside, an outdoor oven.  
 
These two sets of seemingly random materialities are much more than the preserved/reconstructed/decaying fragments of a historical migration that took place three centuries ago. Indeed, they speak of one universal and immutable phenomenon – that of homemaking. In this seminar, Julia will develop a comparative analysis of 21st century Irish- and American-Palatine landscapes and will explore what that tells us about the roots and routes involved in intergenerational homemaking within the Palatine diaspora.