CfP: The Pursuit of Global Urban History: A Dialogue Between Two Fields
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 Historyat Leicester and the Global Urban History Projectpropose a conference to reflect on the implications for urban history of the ‘global turn’. The conference has three aims:
1. Concepts, Methods, Purposes
2. 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?
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?
3. 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