Call for Papers: Urban peripheries? Science in “Second Cities” around 1900 (STEP, Lisbon, Sept 2014)]
Call for Papers: Urban peripheries? Science in “Second
Cities” around 1900
Proposal for a session at the 9th STEP Meeting, Lisbon,
1-3 September 2014
Organizers: Agustí Nieto-Galan (Universitat Autònoma de
Barcelona) and Oliver Hochadel (IMF-CSIC, Barcelona)
Science and the city, but also, science in the city, has
become a hot topic for historians of science. How did science, medicine and
technology shape the urban space? And inversely: how did the city condition the
practices of scientific research and the flow of communication? Despite the
valuable existing scholarship on the urban history of science we feel that much
remains to be explored. Most of the research focused on the metropolis or what
we may call the “first” cities (Paris, London, Berlin, etc.).
Yet in how far can their results be transferred to other
“second” cities such as Barcelona, Hamburg, Glasgow, Rotterdam, Copenhagen and
so on?
These cities have been under the radar of much of recent
scholarship but surely deserve an in-depth-investigation. “Second” may refer to
not being to capital of a country, or to sheer size, to its political or
economical importance or its “peripheral” location. True, the concept of
“second cities” is quite vague. But for the time being we would like not to endeavor
a precise definition in order to amass case studies first. The idea of this
session is to pull together such case studies on “second cities” in Europe but
also from the Americas etc. A possible chronological focus might be the decades
around 1900 (ca. 1870-1930) where the modern city took form.
Furthermore we should like to advance the discussion on a
methodological level. In short: how to write an urban history of science? The
sheer complexity of the topic, its abundant sources, innumerous actors and so
on pose quite a historiographical challenge. We would argue for example that it
makes no sense to neatly disjoin the spheres of art, architecture, science,
medicine, politics etc. These spheres need to be understood as a seamless web
with numerous intersections. Yet how would one best describe such a seamless
web?
The topic is very rich, hence numerous perspectives might
be taken. To mention but a few:
- Science in “second cities”?
- Urban and green? Science and the city and environmental
history
- Pure modernity? Science and the city around 1900
- Science and the city as micro-history
- Liasions fécondes? Science and art in the modern city
- The architecture of modern science: universities, labs
and museums in the city
- Comparative approaches: port cities, cities of
engineers, the park in the city, technologies of entertainment in the modern
city etc.
- Bright, clean and exclusive: New spaces of medical
practice the city around 1900
- Far from gone. Animals in the modern city
- Le quotidien. The interaction between science and urban
everyday life
In case you are interested in contributing to this
session on Urban peripheries? Science in “Second Cities” around 1900
please send an abstract of roughly 250 words by December,
31, 2013 to oliver.hochadel@imf.csic.es
AND to agusti.nieto@uab.cat.
Dr. Oliver Hochadel
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
Institució Milà i Fontanals C/Egipcíaques, 15
08001 Barcelona
Spain
T: +34 93 442 34
89
F: +34 93 443 00 71