Call for papers
IMAGINING THE CITY
International interdisciplinary conference to be held at St Johnıs College,
Cambridge, UK, 30 July-2 August 2004.
Urban culture, its impact on the creative imagination, and the
representation of both individual cities and the general nature of life in
cities have provided a rich seam of inquiry in recent years for those who
work in literary and cultural studies as well as in sociology, geography,
and architectural history. The purpose of the conference is to provide a
forum for experts in these fields to compare notes on the role of the
imagination in conceiving the city as a symbolic place for the intersection
of historical and cultural identities, and in representing the city through
the media of literature, art, film and performance. The organizers are keen
to develop a programme which will look beyond the familiar images of cities
in antiquity, the Renaissance, the industrial and the post-industrial world,
and focus rather on such aspects of the city as the following:
- the city as a place of utopia, each and myth
- the cultural effects of the social, political and spatial organization of
the city
- the city as a historical and/or symbolic space for the formation of the
political imaginary
- the relation between the human and the technical in urban space
- the role of time, emotion and affect in the city
- scenes of cultural exchange and intercultural tension
Papers may be in English, German or French. The organizers expect to publish
a selection of the papers in a volume or volumes designed to exemplify
current thinking on the issues concerned in the series Cultural History and
Literary Imagination, published by Peter Lang, of which they are the
editors. Further information on this series and the activities associated
with it can be found on the following website:
http://www.mml.cam.ac.uk/german/researchgroup/intro.html
Please send your proposal (title and short summary of content) by Friday 16
January 2004 to either of the following:
Dr David Midgley, Director of Studies in Modern Languages, St Johnıs
College, Cambridge CB2 1TP, United Kingdom
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Dr Christian Emden, Assistant Professor of German, Department of German &
Slavic Studies, Rice University, Houston, TX 77005, USA
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
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