Vol. 61, December 2024
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.
| Narrating Urban Lives Recordings
The Narrating Urban Lives series concluded on June 5 with "Critical Temporalities," a conversation featuring Dipesh Chakrabarty and Stefanos Geroulanos, moderated by Rosemary Wakeman! You can view the recording here.
If you missed "Worldmaking" on May 22, featuring Kaysha Corinealdi, Michael Goebel, and Prita Meier in a conversation moderated by Kenny Cupers, you can view the recording here.
You can view the recordings of all past conversations in this series on our YouTube channel here.
| Network Spotlight: Call for books and reviewers
| The pre-modern book reviews editor for Urban History is soliciting suggestions for books and reviewers writing on any area outside of Britain/Europe before ~1800. If any members of the GUHP community has suggestions for new books or volunteers to review in this area, they can reach out to Michael Thornton (m.thornton@northeastern.edu).
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Imagine Lagos: Mapping History, Place, and Politics in a Nineteenth-Century African City
By Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi
(Ohio University Press, 2024)
Imagine Lagos, by Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi, addresses the spatial history of nineteenth-century Lagos, rebuilding its past as a series of encounters: between men and women, between past and present, between enslaved and free, between the living and dead, and finally between land and lagoon. This is a history anchored in the streets of Lagos Island. Every chapter of Imagine Lagos starts at a different intersection. Explore the junction at Omidídùn Street and Ìnábẹ̀rẹ̀ Street to understand the importance of street names to the history of Old Lagos. Follow the curve of Lake Street at Ẹlẹ́gbàta Street to learn the enduring history of the 1851 bombing of Lagos by the British. In chapter 3, learn about how Lagos was rebuilt from the vantage point of the intersection of Water, Tinubu and Ọdúnlàmì Streets. Hidden histories of old Lagos are buried at the cemetery at the junction of Joseph and Campbell streets. Finally, let’s rethink the history of justice (or even injustice) in Lagos, from where Broad Street meets Prison Street...[more]
| | | | Class Meets Land: the Embodied History of Land Financialization
By Maria Kaika and Luca Ruggiero
(University of California Press, 2024)
Class Meets Land reveals something seemingly counterintuitive: that nineteenth-century class struggles over land are deeply implicated in the transition to twenty-first-century financial capitalism. Challenging our understanding of land financialization as a recent phenomenon propelled by high finance, Maria Kaika and Luca Ruggiero foreground 150 years of class struggle over land as a catalyst for assembling the global financial constellation. Narrating the close-knit histories of industrial land, industrial elites, and the working class, the authors offer a novel understanding of land financialization as a “lived” process: the outcome of a relentless, socially embodied historical unfolding, in which shifts in land’s material, economic, and symbolic roles impact both local everyday lives and global capital flows...[more]
| | | | Global Yorùbá: Regional and Diasporic Networks
By Toyin Falola
(Indiana University Press, 2024)
In Global Yorùbá, renowned scholar Toyin Falola covers the history, people, traditions, environment, religion, spirituality, cosmology, culture, and philosophy of one of Africa's largest cultural groups, the Yorùbá, all while considering the people's relationship with their immediate and distant neighbors. Falola examines how the Yorùbán people have adapted to their environment and tapped it to (re)invent their civilization, shape their culture and traditions, and inform their socioeconomic relations with their neighbors. These interactions have guided the Yorùbá philosophy that developed over time, expressing their conviction regarding society's evolution and the place that humans occupy within it. This web of knowledge can present a more coherent account than any other text yet produced regarding Yorùbá civilization...[more]
| | |  | | “Art in Orbit”: São Paulo, New York, and the Internationalization of Abstract Expressionism
By Marcio Siwi
Luso-Brazilian Review (September 2024)
This article explores the place of São Paulo within the rapidly changing international cultural geography of the post-World War II period. Using a transnational and multidisciplinary lens, and focusing on the rich dynamic between São Paulo and New York, I argue for the centrality of São Paulo in several different yet related historical and cultural processes: The emergence of New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) as a global institution; the internationalization of abstract expressionism—especially artists associated with the New York School; and efforts by leading New Yorkers to project New York internationally as a leading cultural center whose artists were on the cutting-edge of artistic production. Finally, I consider how leading Brazilian intellectuals pushed back against the triumphalist narrative of Abstract Expressionism sponsored by U.S. critics at the São Paulo Biennial and, in doing so, inserted Brazilian artists experimenting with geometric abstraction into an increasingly divided international artistic circuit...[more]
| | | | Were post-colonial cities US imperial cities?
By Cyrus Schayegh
Urban History (June 2024)
This exploratory text proposes a US imperial ‘research perspective’ on post-war post-colonial cities – cities that the United States did not colonially occupy, i.e. not cities like Manila, 1898–1946. US imperial actors and interests helped shape such cities, and in turn were shaped by their people and structures. Importantly, the US case seems to strengthen the general recent view, also regarding formal empires, that it makes little sense to posit the existence of an imperial city type, and more sense to use ‘the imperial urban’ as a research perspective...[more]
| | |  | | The Communist International, Forged Passports and the Interwar Border Regimes in the Middle East
By Burak Sayım
History Workshop Journal (November 2024)
In October 1921 the French Chamber of Commerce in Alexandria, Egypt, filed a petition to the French authorities. The First World War had meant years of bloodshed, closed borders and economic hardship. But now the war was over, and the petition reflected the sense of optimism permeating post-war societies. The petition’s authors highlighted the fact that passports were no longer needed for travels between France and Belgium, and talks were under way to make the passport-free trip possible between Great Britain and France. Hence, to give tourism and commerce a much-needed shot in the arm, they argued, it would be wise to allow travel and trade between Egypt and the Allied countries without the cumbersome red tape of visas and passports.2 The French administration in office was hardly ‘anti-business’, but an obstacle stood in the way – a major one. Commenting on the petition, Henri Gaillard, the French representative in Egypt, was quick to point out the inconvenience of such a measure: ‘the abolition of passports for Egypt seems inappropriate to me; the Bolshevist propaganda that is currently carried out in North Africa requires, on the contrary, the maintenance of control over people going to or returning from Egypt...[more] | | |  | | Cities of the Eastern Mediterranean
The Metropole
The Metropole, the official blog of the Urban History Association, has put together a series of essays covering urban, political, and social transformation across seven cities of the Eastern Mediterranean for the month of May. Assistant editor Zeead Yaghi kicked things off with an overview of the month contextualizing the region and placing contributions in dialogue with Mediterranean urbanity: “For The Metropole’s theme month, our writers and contributors zoom into three structural forces, and their interplay, in their investigation of urbanity and daily life in Eastern Mediterranean cities, most notably: commercial capitalism, the (imperial, colonial, or postcolonial) state, and people and the political, social, and communal logics that shape their behaviors.”
Other essays in the series include "Urban Huts, Sickness, and Mobility: Finding Immigrants in Haifa and Jaffa in the 1930s and 1940s" by Lauren Banko, "The Jewish Quarter of Saïda: Intertwined Displacements and Memories of Absence in a Southern Lebanese City" by Molly Oringer, and "From the Railway to the Highway: The History of (Un)Free Movement in the Arab Mediterranean" by Ingy Higazi. Read all the articles here.
| Conferences, Workshops, and Events |  | Narrative Matters 2025: Disparate Narrative Worlds: Crisis, Conflict, and the Possibility of Hope
The American University of Paris and Université Paris Cité
13-16 May 2025
Disparate narrative worlds are not only a feature of the political landscape but are also embedded in aspects of daily life where social divisions and patterns of affiliation generate divergent realms of meaning. We can thus speak about disparate narrative worlds between generations, developmental stages, social roles and classes, religions, ethnicities, races, neurotypes, and persons. We also find worlds of men and women, young and old, the able and disabled as well as doctors and patients, teachers and students, and more. The question of the construction of disparate narrative worlds is only part of this conference’s scope. In addition, we are very interested in contributions oriented toward bridging divides in order to arrive at novel alliances and solidarities that can more effectively address the myriad challenges that confront our shared world. How can we connect narrative worlds to create, more or less, common spaces? Narrative Matters 2025, the 12th biennial conference, is co-organized by the George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights and Conflict Prevention at The American University of Paris and the Paris Center for Narrative Matters at Université Paris Cité...[more]
| | |  | Summer School: The Archives of Islam in the Russian Empire (16th-early 20th Centuries)
Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna
6-11 July 2025
Our summer school is designed to explore a range of scholarly approaches to the hermeneutics of records and the formation of archives on Islam in the territories of the former Russian Empire in the early modern and modern period. Here the term “archive” is used in a broad and all-encompassing sense, which includes all possible activities of record-keeping. The goal of this initiative is to draw attention on practices of information-gathering and knowledge production on the Muslim communities inhabiting the vast area encompassing Inner Asia, Siberia, Central Asia and the Caucasus from the fall of the Khanate of Kazan (1552) to the end of the Russian Empire. In addition, by bringing archival science into conversation with Russian and Islamic studies, our summer school promotes an extended reflection on the institutions and the individuals (archivists, historians, Orientalists, dragomans, and go-betweens of all walks of life) who played a significant role in the creation of the imperial repositories that today preserve records about Islam and Muslim communities in Central Eurasia. The programme of our summer school is designed to offer a wide range of activities to familiarize students with writing, documentary, and archival practices in Tsarist-ruled Central Eurasia...[more]
| | |  | International Summer School Towards Inclusive Global Histories
Växjö, Sweden
7-9 September 2025
The summer school will focus on three novel research fields within global history: Global Diplomacy, gender, and environmental questions. By framing approaches that emphasize different voices and alternative archives in terms of “global histories” in the plural, we aim to promote the inclusion of a broad range of voices, perspectives, and orientations within the field, while forcefully rejecting the possibility of insisting on a single, dominating story or grand narrative of global history. The summer school will offer plenary sessions by leading experts in the field and allow for hands-on methodological conversations among all participating scholars. Early career scholars will be encouraged to reflect on key methodological questions along the lines of the summer school themes with scholars from around the world. We invite contributions consisting of projects based on original research and empirically grounded PhD thesis work in progress. We encourage theoretical, methodological, ethical, and historiographical reflections on how to make global history more inclusive. Although the main language of the summer school will be English, individual presentations and panels in other languages can be accommodated...[more]
| | | Calls for Papers & Proposals |
Panel CfP: "Learning from elsewhere: The African lives of global urban models"
The European Conference on African Studies, Prague, Czech Republic
25-28 June 2025
If you are interested in attending the conference, please consider submitting an abstract to this panel under Urban Studies stream: "Learning from elsewhere: The African lives of global urban models." Through worlding Afropolitan and Afropean experiences, African cities have been the recipient for a myriad of global urban models (smart, green, sustainable, frugal, 15-minute, compact etc.). At the same time, urban Africa has undergone a significant transformation of infrastructure and environment as well as lived experiences and lifestyles. African urban planners and policy makers have been eager to envision elsewhere in a bid to rebrand their home cities. Such practice of urban modeling is not duplicating a universal urban model but learning from various experiences across the Global South and the Global East. In the process, Afropolitanism and African futurism are largely “worlded” through situated everyday practices, relationally drawing from other cities. This panel calls for a deeper understanding of multifaceted ways in which urban models, when landing in African cities, are reconfigured and renegotiated both by policy makers and city dwellers...[more]
Submission deadline: December 15, 2024
| Call for paper for panel: "Ethioglobal: Exploring Ethiopian Diaspora in the 20th Century"
European Conference on African Studies (ECAS 2025), Prague
June 25-28, 2025
We are particularly seeking papers for the panel titled "Ethioglobal: Exploring Ethiopian Diaspora in the 20th Century" under the History category. If your expertise aligns with this topic, we strongly encourage you to submit your work and share your insights on the Ethiopian Diasporas...[more]
Submission deadline: December 15, 2024
| CFP: "Global Approaches to the Holocaust" - Regional Institute on the Holocaust and Jewish Civilization
Omaha, Nebraska
April 3-5, 2025
The Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University (HEFNU) and the Sam and Frances Fried Holocaust and Genocide Academy at the University of Nebraska at Omaha are pleased to announce the Spring 2025 Regional Institute on “Global Approaches to the Holocaust,” which will take place on April 3-5, 2025 in Omaha, Nebraska. Scholars continue to challenge the idea that the Holocaust was an exclusively European project. Recent research exploring the history, memory and representation of the Holocaust has focused on countries in Asia, Africa, North and South America, the Middle East and Australia. The Omaha Regional Institute asks how does our understanding of the Holocaust change when we shift focus from a primarily European perspective and adopt a more global approach? What new insights are gained from exploring the impact of the Holocaust from outside Europe? How do countries that were not directly impacted by Nazi policies of occupation and extermination remember the Holocaust? What consequences does a global approach to the Holocaust entail?...[more]
Submission deadline: December 15, 2024
| CFP: Urban History Association Conference 2025
Los Angeles, California
October 9-12, 2025
The Urban History Association invites submissions for its 11th Biennial Conference in Los Angeles, California on October 9 - 12, 2025. The Conference Program Committee seeks proposals for papers, panels, roundtables, posters, workshops, retrospectives, lightning rounds, professional development opportunities, and many other kinds of sessions on any aspect of urban, suburban, and metropolitan history in the United States and globally. The conference theme, Metropolitan Majorities, reflects trends across the world: the ongoing population growth of cities and their metropolitan areas; the rising ethnoracial and cultural diversity of urban and suburban places; the increasing concentration of economic activities; and the contentious politics that have accompanied these changes....[more]
Submission deadline: February 1, 2025 | Fellowships, Grants, & Awards |  | | Summer Graduate Student Research Fellowships
The Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies
The Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies is pleased to offer annual Summer Graduate Student Research Fellowships designed for students accepted to or currently enrolled in a master’s degree program or in the first year of a PhD program at a college or university in North America. Students who have completed more than one year of doctoral work will not be considered. Summer Graduate Student Research Fellowships support early-career graduate students in three-month residencies at the Mandel Center to provide them the opportunity to test ideas, share research findings, explore methodological processes, and develop frameworks for their projects. Each fellow works with a staff mentor who advises them on their project goals and helps guide their research in the Museum's collections. Fellows take part in training seminars that introduce key subjects, essential tools, and useful methods and approaches in Holocaust research. They also attend the Museum's scholarly and publicly-available educational programs...[more]
Application deadline: January 15, 2025
| | | | Friends of Princeton University Library Research Grants
Princeton University Library
Each year, the Friends of the Princeton University Library offer short-term Library Research Grants to promote scholarly use of the Princeton University Library special and distinct collections. Applications will be considered for scholarly use of archives, manuscripts, rare books, and other rare and unique holdings in Special Collections, including Mudd Library; as well as rare books in Marquand Library of Art and Archaeology, and in the East Asian Library (Gest Collection). These grants, which have a value of up to $6,000 plus transportation costs, are meant to help defray expenses incurred in traveling to and residing in Princeton during the tenure of the grant. The length of the grant will depend on the applicant’s research proposal but is ordinarily between two and four weeks...[more]
Application deadline: January 15, 2025
| | |  | | Diamonstein-Spielvogel Fellowship Program
The New York Public Library
The New York Public Library is pleased to offer the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Fellowship Program to support advanced research at the Library’s flagship Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. Fellowships are open to Ph.D. candidates, post-doctoral scholars, and independent researchers with projects that would significantly benefit from research conducted onsite at the Schwarzman Building. Projects requiring access to original materials including manuscripts, archives, books, photographs, prints, maps, newspapers, and journals will be given preference, but all worthy projects will be considered. Applicants studying the humanities as well as those working in the visual, auditory/performing, and literary arts are welcome to apply. Projects focused on science, technology, psychology, public policy, education, and other areas are also eligible, but only if the proposed project is centered on humanities-related methodologies...[more]
Application deadline: January 20, 2025
| | |  | | Center for Research on Global Catholicism Fellows Seminar
Center for Research on Global Catholicism at Saint Louis University
The Center for Research on Global Catholicism at Saint Louis University is pleased to announce the launch of its second cycle of the Seminar Fellowship Program in 2025-2027 on the theme of “Global Catholicism in Local Spaces.” Successful applicants will be engaged in research projects related to the polycentric features of global Catholicism and their manifestations in local physical spaces. Inspired by the insights of the “spatial turn,” lines of inquiry should focus on the multi-layering of Catholicism with local cultures in distinct physical settings. The CRGC invites applicants at any academic rank, including ABDs, from any humanities or social science discipline to apply.
The Seminar will consist of eight fellows: four from academic departments at Saint Louis University; four from any university or academic institution (research library, museum, archives, etc.) in the United States or around the world. Six of the eight fellowships are reserved for scholars holding a PhD with active research and publishing agendas. The two remaining fellowships are reserved for advanced PhD students...[more]
Application deadline: March 1, 2025
| | | | BHC Kaufman Fellowship Application Deadline
Business History Conference
The Henry Kaufman Financial History Fellowship Program supports research by emerging scholars in financial history, broadly conceived. Fellowships include monetary awards as well as support from the BHC community of scholars, which for decades has prioritized engagement with graduate students and early career researchers. The program is endowed by a generous gift from renowned economist Dr. Henry Kaufman (Henry & Elaine Kaufman Foundation, Inc). The program offers three kinds of awards: Research fellowships, Dissertation fellowships, and Post-Doctoral fellowships. To be eligible, applicants must be enrolled in or graduates of an accredited doctoral program....[more]
Application deadline: March 1, 2025 | | | |