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From: Sergey Glebov [mailto:[log in to unmask]] CALL FOR PAPERS: Ab Imperio in 2009 : Homo Imperii: The Imperial Situation of Multiple Temporalities and Heterogeneous Space When Marc Bloch coined his famous definition of history as a science about humans in time,[1] he anticipated by several decades the “anthropological turn” in historical studies. The humanistic message of Bloch’s formulation is ambivalent: does it suggest that human beings change together with the circumstances of “total history,” or that they remain essentially the same throughout different epochs and situations? Is it really possible to “translate” adequately the life experience of a representative of a certain epoch in terms of a different time period? How do “grand narratives” look through the prism of an individual’s life experience? How does one’s life perception depend on the different aspects of the imperial situation that may combine uneven social and cultural spaces, and elements of different epochs, both archaic and modern? Can the methods of biographical writing and prosopography be regarded as an alternative to grand, depersonalized historical narratives? Writing biography is inconceivable without taking into consideration time and space as crucial factors, but how does the specificity of these features affect human life and its perception? [1] In the 1950s, this formula (“Science des hommes… dans le temps”) was translated into English in the both old-fashioned and misleading way: “The science of men… in time”, even though in the next sentence Bloch clarified the meaning of the word: “L’historien ne pense pas seulement ‘humain’” – “think [only] of the human.” Cf.: Marc Bloch. Apologie pour l’histoire ou Metier d’historien. 2e edition. Paris, 1952. Pp. 4-5; Marc Bloch. The Historian’s Craft. New York, 1953. P. 27. No. 2/2009 “Homo Imperii in Space and Time: Settling and Unsettling Imperial Spaces” Mappa mundi, homo imperii · garden cities • a free port or a naval stronghold • humans and temporality in the capital and in the provinces: a history of imperial cities • the rotation of cadres, workforce migration, and travel • a new appointment: governors and administrators changing workplaces • biography as the “interpretation of travel” • Friday, Saturday, Sunday: when does empire rest? • calendars and clocks • the many dimensions of empire: moving in space as traveling in time • the five-stage Marxist historical scheme: “the empire of history” • constructing the “spheres of vital interests” in the foreign policy of Russian empire and Soviet Union • conception of individual, social, generational, and political “age” • membership in a generation. No. 3/2009 “Maison des sciences de l’Homme: Human Sciences in the Empire” The history of enlightenment in Russia as a project of normalization and Europeanization • scientific classifications of the population • borrowings and adaptations of the scientific discourses and practices of nineteenth-century colonial empires as a condition of admittance into the club of European colonial powers • psychology, its subjects and its objects of study • social sciences in imperial context • the sciences of imperial diversity: anthropology, ethnography, linguistics, etc. • museums and exhibitions as imperial “Panopticons” • political human sciences in empire • the humanistic paradigm and the problem of representation of the modern personality • medicine as a language of studying the individual and society • the imperial concept of norm and deviation • scientific foundations of uprising against empire • projects of rational cognition and re-description of empire and its inhabitants • “caring for souls:” theology on personality and empire. No. 4/2009 “From Homo Imperii to Civitas: Projects of Imagined Imperial Communities” Is civic society possible in empire? • Projects of state reform of imperial population: social engineering from above in empire • great ideologies on “small men” and their communities • “underground Russia” as an alternative social network • the corporate structure of imperial society: cooperative, professional, confessional, et al. self-organization • Utopian projects of imperial society • political parties and movements and programs of imperial social reform • the empire of “obshchestvennost’” in Russia and USSR.