Vol. 49, November 2023
Have you published something new in Global Urban History? Are you hosting a conference, workshop, or event? We'd like our members to know!
GUHP is a member-supported organization.
| Related Network Event Spotlights |  | | World History Association Annual Meeting
June 27-29, 2024
San Francisco
The World History Association invites participants to submit proposals for organized panels, papers, roundtables, workshops, innovative sessions, and meet the author sessions for its annual conference to be held at San Francisco State University, June 27-29, 2024, with the theme of ‘Currents,’ broadly conceived. The 2024 conference will explore the dynamic flows of ideas, people, politics, and more that shape our interconnected world. The WHA encourages proposals for sessions and papers presenting original research and pedagogical techniques within the overarching theme of Currents as well as other topics of interest to world historians. Its welcomes topics involving the widest possible range of geographic locales. The organizers invite proposals from students, scholars, teachers, and activists around the world that investigate—and extend the boundaries of—the conference’s theme.
Submission deadline: January 1, 2024 |  | | International Planning History Society
20th Biennial Conference
July 2-5, 2024
Hong Kong
The International Planning History Society’s 2024 conference theme is The (High Density) Metropolis and Region in Planning History. The first day of the conference will be virtual, and the remainder of the conference will be held in person. The organizers invite paper and panel proposals related to the following topics:
- Port city planning;
- Colonial urban planning;
- Post-colonial planning trajectories;
- New Town planning;
- Regions and regional planning in history;
- Cities and the natural environment;
- Planning in high-density urban context;
- Capital accumulation and planning within global cities;
- City development in Southeast Asia and other Asian regions;
- The history of urbanization and planning in the Chinese context;
- Public housing;
- Community planning, health, and public space;
- Transport planning;
- Planning historiography;
- City planning and heritage;
- Planning History pedagogy.
Submission deadline: January 15, 2024 | Remodelling to Prepare for Independence: The Philippine Commonwealth, Decolonisation, Cities and Public Works, c. 1935–46
By Ian Morley
(Routledge, 2023)
Remodelling to Prepare for Independence illuminates the implications of the USA’s final phase of colonial rule in the Philippine Islands. It explores the Filipino side of decolonisation and the management of the built environment in the years immediately prior to self-rule. This book shakes off the collaboration vs. resistance paradigm that empire histories generally follow and consequently yields an original vantage point to comprehend transition within an Asian society in the years immediately prior to, during, and after World War Two. This will not only deepen insight of the American Empire, but also grants the opportunity to tie Philippine political-cultural change to the global history of urban planning’s advancement. [more]
| | |  | Urban Flood Risk Management: Looking at Jakarta
By Christopher Silver
(Routledge, 2023)
Like so many of the coastal cities in Southeast Asia (and other regions) established during European colonialism, there has been an ongoing challenge for decades dealing with the growing frequency and intensity of flooding. Jakarta’s flood problems since the 1990s have been nothing less than monumental and the inability of the local and national governments to mitigate flooding in Jakarta is the most visible manifestation of fundamental water management deficiencies. This book offers a comprehensive and systematic historical assessment of Jakarta’s water management practices from the colonial era through the early years of the Indonesian republic and Jakarta’s emergence as a sprawling megacity.This book draws upon a vast multidisciplinary literature and a wide array of government documents to unravel the complex history of water management that has led to approximately 40% of the city now lying below sea level. [more]
| | | Architect Hannes Meyer and Radical Modernism: A Biography
by Georg Leidenberger
(Peter Lang, 2023)
How did architecture, design and art transform from an aesthetic enterprise to serving the needs of the masses? And how did a single individual–and an outstanding representative of "radical modernism"--pursue his personal convictions in an age marked by war and totalitarianism in the name of the collective? These questions frame this comprehensive life story of Hannes Meyer, who as an upstart architect in Basel, director of the Bauhaus in Germany, urban planner near the China-Russian border, and designer of social housing and hospitals in Mexico, fought to affirm the rights of all to a life of comfort and human dignity while seeking to maintain his own identity in the process. [more]
| | | The Routledge Handbook of Comparative Global Urban Studies
Edited by Patrick Le Galès and Jennifer Robinson
(Routledge, 2023)
The Routledge Handbook of Comparative Global Urban Studies is a timely intervention into the field of global urban studies, coming as comparison is being more widely used as a method for global urban studies, and as a number of methodological experiments and comparative research projects are being brought to fruition. It consolidates and takes forward an emerging field within urban studies and makes a positive and constructive intervention into a lively arena of current debate in urban theory. Drawing together more than 50 international scholars and practitioners, this book offers an overview of key ideas and practices in the field and extends current thinking and practice. [more]
| | | | Fanfare for a City: Music and the Urban Imagination in Haussmann’s Paris
By Jacek Blaszkiewicz
(University of California Press, 2023)
Fanfare for a City invites us to listen to the sounds of Paris during the Second Empire (1852–1870), a regime that oversaw dramatic social change in the French capital. By exploring the sonic worlds of exhibitions, cafés, streets, and markets, Jacek Blaszkiewicz shows how the city's musical life shaped urban narratives about le nouveau Paris: a metropolis at a crossroads between its classical, Roman past and its capitalist, imperial future. Drawing on theoretical approaches from historical musicology, urban sociology, and sound studies to shed light on newly surfaced archival material, Blaszkiewicz argues that urbanism was a driving force in how nineteenth-century music was produced, performed, and policed. [more]
| | | | An Address in Paris: Emplacement, Bureaucracy, and Belonging in Hostels for West African Migrants
By Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye
(Columbia University Press, 2023)
After West African migrants arrived in France in the 1960s, the authorities opened residences for them known as “foyers.” Initially intended to contain the West African population, these hostels for single men fostered the emergence of Black communities in the heart of Paris and other cities. More recently, however, a nationwide renovation program sought to replace the collective living arrangements of foyers with more individualized spaces by constructing new buildings or drastically reshaping existing ones—and casting the West African presence as a threat to French identity. [more]
| | | | Splintering Towers of Babel: Paradoxical Architectures and Urban Infrastructures
By Liora Bigon and Edna Langenthal
(Routledge, 2023)
Splintering Towers of Babel focuses on and redefines soft infrastructures and critical infrastructure projects. It explores key issues in contemporary urban studies including town planning histories, architecture, heritage, colonialism and postcolonialism, philosophy, and ethics. The book combines transdisciplinary perspectives on the key historical, philosophical, and political issues associated with urban experiences, built forms, and infrastructure networks. It explores uneven dimensions in contemporary urbanisms and develops spatial phenomenological thinking with reference to the northern and southern hemispheres. [more]
| | | | Street-Naming Cultures in Africa and Israel: Power Strategies and Place-Making Practices
By Liora Bigon and Michel Ben Arrous
(Routledge, 2022)
This book is focused on the street-naming politics, policies and practices that have been shaping and reshaping the semantic, textual and visual environments of urban Africa and Israel. Its chapters expand on prominent issues, such as the importance of extra-formal processes, naming reception and unofficial toponymies, naming decolonisation, place attachment, place-making and the materiality of street signage. By this, the book directly contributes to the mainstreaming of Africa’s toponymic cultures in recent critical place-names studies. The materiality of street signage signifies the profound and powerful connections between structured politics, current mundane practices, historical traditions and subaltern cultures. [more]
| | | | The Urban
By Ümit Fýrat Açýkgöz and Ilham Khuri-Makdisi
The Interwar World (Routledge, 2023)
Taking the city as a physical, social, and imaginary space, this chapter offers a history of the interwar urban at the intersection of global connectivities and local specificities. It explores the material dynamics of cities within their political, economic, and social contexts; representations of the urban in different visual and written media; asymmetrical power relations at both global and local levels; and struggles over accessing and controlling urban spaces. In this framework, the chapter elaborates on diverse issues such as urban planning, housing, real estate market, infrastructure, urban activism, struggles over municipal services, and the role of global human mobility in disseminating urban forms and cultures. [more]
| | | | Extreme Territories of Urbanization
By Urban Theory Lab
In what sense do we today live in an “urban age”? This idea is frequently invoked by scholars, policy-makers, planners, designers and architects, usually with reference to the proposition that more than 50% of the world’s population now lives within cities. But, can the nature of our urban world be understood and mapped exclusively with reference to the growth of cities and their populations? Rather than focusing our attention on large population centers, we investigate urbanization from the point of view of its putative “outsides,” the zones that are commonly represented as rural, remote, wild and/or untouched by human impact. Through a combination of historical analysis, critical geopolitical economy, geospatial data visualization and conceptual experimentation, this research aims to extend the analytical and political horizons of urban theory into these “extreme territories” of urbanization. [more] | Conferences, Workshops, and Events | | Navigating Commodities: Production, Markets, and Consumption in History
University of Tokyo
November 18-19, 2023
The event explores the history of commodities in different temporal and regional contexts and their broader significance for questions of power, knowledge, and social change. As a multifaceted topic, commodity history has been examined from a variety of disciplinary angles, including economic and business history, social and cultural history, global and transnational history, anthropology, philosophy, and sociology. This two-day interdisciplinary event aims to identify these intersections and interrogate what they mean for our understanding of commodities, from those deeply embedded in colonial histories like tea and textiles, to modern items that underwent rapid transformation such as contraception and skincare products. [more]
| | | | Political Economy Tokyo Seminar
University of Tokyo
2023-2024
The Political Economy Tokyo Seminar (PoETS) is a monthly English-language research seminar hosted at the University of Tokyo. The seminar brings together historians from Japan and around the world to understand the economy in its relationships with broader social environments such as politics, businesses, science, media, gender, and everyday life. The seminar convenes online regularly on the first or second Tuesday of the month at 5 pm (Japan Standard Time). [more]
| | | Calls for Papers & Proposals | CFP: Cities across the Eastern Mediterranean blog posts
The Metropole
Cities across the Eastern Mediterranean have long shared common material, cultural, and social linkages. This is due to a myriad of factors most notably proximity, trade, and shared governance. Thus the development of the built environment constituting these cities have historically evolved along similar patterns. To highlight both the commonality and divergence of such developments. The Metropole is looking for submissions regarding any aspect of Eastern Mediterranean urbanity for its May 2024 theme month. Guidelines can be seen here. Final submissions should be between 1,200 and 3,000 words. Authors of selected essays will be compensated $200 for their post. Please send pitches to themetropole@urbanhistory.org.
| CFP: 7th World Conference of the International Federation for Public History
University of Luxembourg
September 3-7, 2024
The field of public history is expanding rapidly. Public history fosters accessibility, engagement, and participation for a wide range of people. The links between “history” and “publics” can take many forms including different audiences, contributors, spaces, projects, and uses of the past. In line with previous IFPH conferences, the 2024 event has an open call that invites proposals and discussions on history for, with, by, of, in, or among different publics. [more]
Submission deadline extended: November 29, 2023
| CFP: Race and Slavery Narratives in the European Colonial Empires: Interdisciplinary Approaches conference
Praia, Cape Verde
January 31-February 1, 2024
Proposals are invited for twenty-minutes papers which explore any aspect of the relationship between race and slavery in the European colonial empires. Papers are welcome from any academic discipline. Interdisciplinary papers and discussions on the relationship between race and slavery in the European colonies in Africa are particularly encouraged. Race and Slavery Narratives in the European Colonial Empires: Interdisciplinary Approaches is organized by the Centre for the History of Society and Culture, by the Institute for Philosophical Studies (both from the Arts Faculty of the University of Coimbra), University of Cape Verde, University de Santiago and by the Portuguese History Academy. Proposals can be submitted in English, Portuguese, French, Spanish and Italian (at the conference itself, for papers presented in any language beside English, an extended English abstract will be required). [more]
Submission deadline: November 30, 2023
| CFP: Feeding the Citizens? workshop
STAM Ghent City Museum
April 11-12, 2024
Crossing present-day debates on land-based food supplies with different configurations of urban land and landownership in the past, this conference welcomes contributions from different geographic regions and different time periods, and how such experiences might find inspiration in the past. At a moment when both the financialization of urban real estate and the market-dependency of urban food supplies are hotly debated, this workshop aims to question the alternative and complementary functions of urban land and landownership. [more]
Submission deadline: December 1, 2023
| CFP: Symposium on American Empire, Extraction, and Environment
The University of Chicago
April 5, 2024
What can be said of the consensus about the labor and land use which has formed the basis of global capitalist modernity? How might an energy transition challenge or entrench the histories of extraction and exploitation that has given rise to American empire? How do we imagine equitable and sustainable futures in the era of climate crisis? What forms of energy will humans consume and where will resources be developed? Where will agricultural products be grown and how will the non-human be treated? What forms of territorial governance will be just? And who will control the land and the labor which works it? The organizers invite junior scholars and, especially, graduate students and PhD candidates working on North American History and critical geographies of empire, extraction, and the environment to gather new scholarship in dialogue for a symposium to be held at Swift Hall Commons at The University of Chicago Divinity School. [more]
Submission deadline: December 8, 2023
| CFP: Special Issue on “The Mistakes I Have Made”
The American Historical Review
Historians are trained to work carefully to avoid mistakes. With the threat of losing professional credibility, historians rarely admit to their errors, while at the same time, they are trained to expose the errors of others. As a consequence, historians rarely reflect publicly on their slipups unless forced to. But what is lost when mistakes are seen as something to be hidden or glossed over? Is it possible to instead dwell in error as a mode of inquiry? In this special issue, AHR invites historians to reflect on their missteps and how those missteps reveal insights into historical practice. [more]
Submission deadline: December 15, 2023
| CFP: Special Issue on Toxic Ecologies of the Global South
The Global South
In this special issue of The Global South, the editors invite contributors to critically engage with what Sourit Bhattacharya theorized as “the toxic ecologies of the Global South” that reflects “the disposable nature of life and living in this part of the world” as well as the “socio-economic and physio-ecological conditions characteristics of the Global South.” Given the saturation of Global South ecologies with wastes, toxins, and pollutants; we invite contributors to examine the implications of unprecedented exposure to toxic contamination and pollution from various sources, such as industrial pollution, chemical and electronic waste, fossil fuel extractions, and climate change in the Global South. Contributors can also reflect on toxic disasters that lead to several other outcomes such as energy conflicts, and climate migrations from (and within) the Global South; or the various ways in which toxic waste remakes the landscapes and ecologies of the Global South. [more]
Submission deadline: December 31, 2023
| CFP: Rethinking the History of Global Capitalism conference
Rio de Janeiro
March 12-14, 2024
This conference aims to rethink capitalism from a global perspective. With a focus on interdisciplinary and comparative approaches, the organizers particularly encourage theoretical-historiographical syntheses. They also welcome case studies insofar as they combine their empirical investigations with fresh theoretical, conceptual, or methodological perspectives that help us rethink more broadly historical capitalism as a changing global process. [more]
Submission deadline: January 1, 2024
| CFP: Research Symposium Black Experiences in the Wider Atlantic: Approaches, Methods and the Archive
Penn State University
April 12, 2024
The Research Symposium on the “Black Experiences in the Wider Atlantic” intends to foster conversations, discussions, and intellectual collaboration between historians, literary scholars, African/Black Diasporic researchers, writers, and graduate students interested in discussing approaches, methods, and archival experiences when studying and writing about Black and African descendant people’s experiences in the wider Atlantic. We desire panels that demonstrate cross-generational and academic influences between scholars from all relevant disciplines at any point in their scholarly careers. With these aspirations in mind, we encourage proposals from advanced graduate students, postdocs, junior and senior faculty, and those who work outside of the academy. [more]
Submission deadline: January 15, 2024
| CFP: 7th International Conference of Contemporary Affairs in Architecture and Urbanism
Alanya, Turkey
May 23-24, 2024
The 7th International Conference of Contemporary Affairs in Architecture and Urbanism, ICCAUA2024, is being jointly organized by Alanya University in collaboration with Anant National University. The conference will feature both in-person sessions at Alanya University and online sessions mutually will be hosted by Anant National University. The conference brings together all the theories, manifestos and methodologies on contemporary architecture and urban spaces to raise the understanding of the future of architecture and urban planning. Overall, the International Conference of Contemporary Affairs in Architecture and Urbanism ICCAUA2024 aimed to establish a bridge between theory and practice in the built environment. Thus, it reports on the latest research findings and innovative approaches, and methodologies for creating, assessing, and understanding contemporary built environments. [more]
Submission deadline: January 23, 2024
| CFP: 17th meeting of the Urban History/Planning History Group - Real Estate Agency: Land, Housing and Finance in Urban and Planning History
University of Sydney
July 11-13, 2024
Urban History/Planning History Group invites papers on all aspects of urban and planning history in Australia, Aoteraoa/New Zealand and the wider Pacific region. As always, this forum welcomes contributions that explore the history of planning, design and regulation of public spaces, infrastructure, and private development; papers on planners, urban designers and architects involved in the city-making process in any period; and work on the historical evolution of urban policy for housing, heritage, the natural environment, and industry. [more]
Submission deadline: January 31, 2024
| Fellowships, Grants, & Awards | | Global History Fellowship
Weatherhead Research Cluster
Harvard University
The Weatherhead Research Cluster at Harvard University identifies and supports outstanding scholars whose work responds to the growing interest in the encompassing study of global history. We seek to organize a community of scholars interested in the systematic scrutiny of developments that have unfolded across national, regional, and continental boundaries and who propose to analyze the interconnections—cultural, economic, ecological, political and demographic—among world societies. [more]
Application deadline: December 1, 2023
| | | | Short-Term Fellowships
Newberry Library
The Newberry Library awards several short-term fellowships that allow researchers to spend one to two months investigating specific collection items that are essential to their scholarship. These fellowship opportunities are open to scholars at the ABD stage and beyond. Short-Term Fellowships are generally awarded for 1 to 2 months; unless otherwise noted the stipend is $3,000 per month. These fellowships support individual scholarly research for those who have a specific need for the Newberry's collection. [more]
Application deadline: December 15, 2023
| | | | Princeton-Mellon Fellows in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities
Princeton University
The Princeton-Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities is an interdisciplinary program supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that combines the efforts of a diverse group of faculty, programs, and schools to develop a dynamic understanding of urban issues past, present, and future. Its theme, Cities on the Edge, encompass several interrelated concepts, including the juncture of built/natural environmental studies, center/periphery, hemispheric comparatives, migration, New Jersey urbanism, social justice, the humanities as a force of change, and the margin as a place of radical possibility. [more]
Application deadline: January 7, 2024
| | | | Southern African History Book Prize
The Southern African Historical Society and the Historical Association of South Africa are inaugurating a book prize for the best scholarly history publication in book form. The book should be published by a southern African-based press and should be of scholarly and academic merit, as recognised by peers. The first prize will be awarded at the 29th Biennial SAHS conference at the University of Johannesburg in June 2024 and will consider books published with an ISBN publication date of 2021 or 2022. [more]
Application deadline: January 10, 2024
| | | | Collegium Helveticum Fellowships
Zurich
2024-2025
As the joint institute for advanced studies of ETH Zurich, the University of Zurich, and the Zurich University of the Arts, the Collegium Helveticum facilitates research and artistic work across all disciplines. Located in the former Semper Observatory, the Collegium provides a thriving intellectual atmosphere and ideal working conditions for its fellows and promotes exchange across disciplines, engaging different audiences. Fellows are free to pursue their individual projects as outlined in their application and receive support from the Collegium’s team. Projects carried out at the Collegium may convince both by their relevance and originality, spanning from applied science to blue-sky research, as well as from fine arts to artistic research. [more]
Application deadline: February 15, 2024 | | | |