Urban History Group Annual Conference - Transgressive Cities: Practices and Place

This conference explores the relationships between practices of resistance and transgression and the exercise of authority in urban spaces. Participants are invited to consider the implications of Lewis Mumford’s understanding of the city as a stage upon which daily life is enacted and as ‘a theatre of social action’.   In particular, cities are often places in which acts of transgression, resistance and control emerge to challenge and uphold normative rules and patterns of behaviour.   Urban space simultaneously becomes a site of freedom and control as well as the exercise of authority and discipline.  In this context, the city becomes a space in which challenges to authority and, conversely, the exercise of power are deliberately made visible.  At the same time, other forms of resistance are intentionally more covert, choosing to remain hidden rather than become public. Urban authorities react to these challenges by seeking to subvert, restrict or prohibit practices that they readily identify as transgressive.  In the context of cities, papers are invited that explore the concepts of vision, visibility, display, subversion, transgression, resistance, power and authority.  The nature of places in which such practices take place and the way that those are inscribed in the urban landscape are also topics to be discussed.

The conference committee invites proposals for individual papers as well as for individual sessions of up to three papers. Abstract of up to 500 words, including a title, name, affiliation and contact details should be submitted to the conference organiser and should indicate clearly how the content of the paper addresses the conference theme outlined above. Those wishing to propose sessions should provide a brief statement that identifies the ways in which the session will address the conference theme, a list of speakers and paper abstracts. The deadline for proposals for sessions and papers is 15 January 2010.

In addition, the conference will also host a new researchers’ forum. This is aimed primarily at those who are at an early stage in a research project and who wish primarily to discuss ideas rather than present findings. New and current postgraduates working on topics unrelated to the main theme, as well as those just embarking on new research, are particularly encouraged to submit short papers for this forum. 
Graduate students can obtain a bursary to offset some of the expenses associated with attending the conference. Please send an e mail application to Prof. Richard Rodger at Richard.Rodger@ed.ac.uk and ask your PhD supervisor to also send a message confirming your status as a registered PhD student. The Urban History Group would like to acknowledge the Economic History Society for its support for these bursaries.