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THE PURSUIT OF GLOBAL URBAN HISTORY

A Joint Conference of the Global Urban History Project and the Centre for Urban History, University of Leicester

 

John Foster Hall, Oadby Conference Centre, University of Leicester

July 11-12, 2019

 

Registration is open at globalurbanhistry.org 

 

Instructions for panel chairs and presenters: Each session is a full hour and 45 minutes. Please keep presentations to 15 minutes or less, especially if your panel includes four papers. We are very eager to maximize discussion time. 

 

We originally asked presenters to pre-circulate papers after May 1. Given the higher than expected interest in the conference, it will be impractical for us to pre-circulate all papers. Please begin by referring to abstracts below. 

 

For those panelists who still desire to pre-circulate papers, please confer with your chairs to decide how you want to do this and who will act as point person for distribution. Contact us at guhp@globalurbanhistory.orgby May 1stwith your plans, and we can make a public announcement to other conference participants.

 

For panels whose organizers did not specify a chair, please let us know if one of your panelists or organizers will take on the chair role or else please contact someone to chair for you. Check to make sure the Chair you select is not already scheduled at the same time as your panel. If so, please find someone else! Contact guhp@globalurbanhistory.orgwith any changes as soon as possible.

 

 Click below for draft program
GUHP CUH Programme 2019


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The deadline for proposals for this conference has passed. Registration is Open!



Call for Papers

 

The Pursuit of Global Urban History:

A Dialogue Between Two Fields

 

A Conference Organised by the Global Urban History Project and the Centre for Urban History, Leicester

 

Keynote speaker: Sunil Amrith, Harvard University

 

Leicester, 11-12 July 2019

 

The dramatic rise of global history has had a far-reaching impact on the production of historical knowledge. We are now asked to reflect on the global underpinnings of processes previously studied through the lens of the nation, the region and the local. Yet even as the call of the ‘global’ grows insistent, there have been attempts to reflect on what it means to undertake such an enterprise. The current issue of the Journal of Global History carries a spirited debate on the present and future of the field. These debates have significant ramifications for urban history, where the ‘global turn’ has begun to register an impact. A growing number of urban historians now draw upon the methods and discourse of global history in framing their research agendas. The emergence of the Global Urban History Project is an indicator of this growing synergy.

 

It is in this context that the Centre for Urban History at Leicester and the Global Urban History Project propose a conference to reflect on the implications for urban history of the ‘global turn’. The conference has three aims:

 

Concepts, Methods, Purposes

The conference will consider the protocols of knowledge production that make possible the writing of ‘global’ history. Importantly, it asks: how do we tackle the problem of commensurability across time and space that is an essential basis for the writing of any global history? Accordingly, the organizers invite papers that engage critically with issues pertaining to the concepts, methods and sources that inform global urban histories. Questions include the following:

 

  • What are the conceptual underpinnings of a globalized urban history or an urbanized global history?
  • What are the methodological implications of pursuing histories that cut across global space? Must we search for new sources to do this work or simply re-read familiar sources?
  • What is the goal of this work, exactly? To produce globally aware microstudies, better comparisons, more connected analyses between individual cities, or new large-scale narratives of cities’ place in global history? If the last, how do we guard against the critiques of such narratives, that they represent mechanisms of totalization and homogenization or that they replicate Western triumphalism?

     

Intellectual Genealogies

Secondly, the conference will engage with the intellectual genealogy of the current ‘global turn’ within urban history.

 

  • Given that urban historians have engaged in the past with questions of mobility, networks and flows, how new and radical is the current language of ‘connection’, ‘multi-scalar’, ‘transnational’, and ‘globalization’?
  • What are the epistemological and analytical differences between urban historians’ current interest in the global turn and previous analytical frameworks that animated urban history?
  • To what extent do we need to revise sweeping and abstract terms imported from the social sciences to suit global histories that foreground the notoriously contingent complexities of urban political, economic and cultural change?

     

     

The Global and the Urban

Thirdly, the conference seeks to explore how global history and urban history can mutually enrich each other.

  • To what extent can global history elucidate the dynamics of everyday urban life? Is it desirable to translate the dense analysis characteristic of so much urban history to the global scale, and if so how do we do it without being overwhelmed by viewing such large landscapes in that sharp a focus?
  • Can the density of political struggle at the urban level, for example, elucidate global history; do neighbourhoods, streets, squares and other urban spaces matter to historical phenomena that operate at the global level?
  • How does urban cultural production go global and does it have anything to do with its origins in cities? Is there a place for urban emotions or a history of urban sensory phenomena at the global level?
  • Can cities—or other spatial entities—be said to cause or create phenomena operating on a global scale?



How to Participate


The organizers invite proposals for individual presentations (20 minutes) and for panels of 3-4 papers where a theme is explored in detail. We especially encourage applications from scholars working on topics before 1850 and beyond Europe and North America.

 

Participants will be expected to provide full texts of papers by 1 May 2019. Scholars interested in proposing a presentation should send an abstract (max 250 words) and a two-page CV by 31 October 2018 to Sally Hartshorne, sah86@leicester.ac.uk

 

NOTE: GUHP and CUH will do what we can to minimize expenses for the conference and will also seek to ri.ase funds for bursaries and a continuation of GUHP's Travel Award Program for junior scholars. More on that soon. However, most conferees should plan to budget about £ 150 for basic conference fees in addition to transport and lodging (which will be available at reasonable rates at the conference site itself).

Registration