Call for papers:
‘Salty’ Geographies: Subaltern maritime networks, spaces and practices
Department of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow,
October 7th – 9th 2010
Organised by David Featherstone & William Hasty (University of Glasgow)
Sponsored by the Historical Geography Research Group, Social and
Cultural Geography Research Group and the Political Geography Research
Group of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British
Geographers.
________________________________________
Invited speakers include:
Professor Marcus Rediker, Professor and Chair of History, University of
Pittsburgh
Professor Lakshmi Subramanian, Professor of History, Department of
History Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi
Dr Jeremy Anderson and Dr Paula Hamilton, International Transport
Workers’ Federation
Dr Dan Clayton, School of Geography and Geo-sciences, University of St
Andrews
Dr Stephanie Jones, English, School of Humanities, University of Southampton
Dr David Lambert, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of
London
Dr Andrew Smith, Centre for Research on Racism, Ethnicity and
Nationalism, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Applied Social
Sciences, University of Glasgow
Dr Carl Thompson, School of Arts and Humanities, Nottingham Trent University
_________________________________________
Over the last decade or so, geographers have begun to critically engage
with the maritime realms of the past and the present, signalling
something of a shift from the territorial focus which had dominated the
discipline for so long. The worlds of sailors and ships, slaves and
merchants, dockworkers and ports, and even the sea itself have been
explored through the lens of geography. This has led to the
foregrounding of new debates and perspectives in relation to existing
concerns within the discipline and has reworked understandings of
processes such as imperialism and slavery. It has also offered new
points of departure from which geographical research can emerge.
Geographers have, among other things, begun to engage with the politics
of maritime networks (Lambert 2005), the spatial constitution of
maritime networks (Ogborn 2008), explore forms of subaltern agency and
identity constituted by maritime workers (Featherstone 2008), and
interrogate the spatial imaginaries of the ocean (Steinberg 2001).
Much of this work has been positioned in relation to productive
theoretical and empirical attempts to ‘historicise the ocean’ (Klein and
MacKenthun 2004); a paradigm shift in historical studies which advances
a major challenge to existing work in social and political history. This
work has included pioneering work on various forms of Atlantic
radicalism (Linebaugh and Rediker 2000; Rediker 2004, 2007, Scott 1986),
an historical ethnography of the HMS Bounty mutineers (Dening 1992), an
account of slave-ship sailors (Christopher 2006), and work on the
presence of Africans in the Atlantic (Bolster 1997; Gilroy 1992). This
work has led to an important revisioning of nation-centred histories of
radical movements and forms of social practices and opened up new ways
of engaging with subaltern identities, agency and practices.
While drawing on this body of work for inspiration, this conference
seeks to critically engage with the work that has been advanced in
maritime geographies thus far and prompt new research agendas in the
process. The programme of events spanning three days will include
keynote talks, papers and workshops dealing with methodological and
theoretical issues.
Key questions:
•How does a focus on maritime connections refigure terracentric
conceptions of nation and empire?
•What are the sites/spaces of the ship?
•How does a focus on the littoral refigure notions of space and place?
•What are the dynamic spatial practices of maritime workers/ sailor’s
politics/ organising practices?
•What are the geographies of pirates and piracy?
•How does thinking in explicitly spatial terms reconfigure the terms of
debate of existing work on maritime histories?
•How are maritime spaces constituted through transnational and
multi-ethnic relations?
•What are the gendered spatial practices of maritime worlds?
•What human/ non-human configurations are constituted through maritime
networks?
•What productive methodologies are engendered by an attention to
maritime geographies?
________________________________
Abstracts of around 250 words should be submitted to William Hasty
([log in to unmask]) and David Featherstone
([log in to unmask]) by May 31st 2010, including the
following information: name, affiliation, contact email, and technical
requirements (data projector, audio equipment, etc...).
**Two travel bursaries are available for RGS-IBG Historical Geography
Research Group postgraduate members presenting at this conference**
**Two travel bursaries are available for RGS-IBG Social and Cultural
Geography Research Group postgraduate members presenting at this
conference**
--
William Hasty
PhD Candidate, Human Geography
Department of Geographical and Earth Sciences
University of Glasgow
Glasgow, G12 8QQ
[log in to unmask]
http://www.ges.gla.ac.uk:443/postgraduates/whasty
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