Interdisciplinary Workshop
THE CITY AND THE IMAGINATION
30 June 2003
St John's College, Cambridge
Fisher Building
The next major project planned by the research group 'Cultural History &
Literary Imagination' at the University of Cambridge is an international and
interdisciplinary conference in 2004 on cities and the ways in which
imagination shapes both the perception and the representation of the city as
a highly symbolic place for the intersection of different historical and
cultural identities.
As a first step we are going to hold a one-day workshop, involving a variety
of scholars who have particular kinds of expertise and experience of the
many ways in which cities and urban spaces have been conceived and discussed
in the context of medieval, modern, and contemporary culture. We envisage
that the 2004 conference would provide opportunities to compare images of
the city as a symbolic, material and epistemic space of experience across
these historical periods, including the models familiar from such classics
of urban studies as Georg Simmel, Lewis Mumford, and Henri Lefebvre, and
including contemporary perspectives from cultural geography and ethnography.
The workshop provides an initial opportunity to compare notes on the issues
in an informal framework, and to identify themes on which the conference
ought to focus. As such, this workshop is of an experimental nature which
seeks to bridge the gap between difference disciplines in the social
sciences, literary studies and historical disciplines.
The workshop is open to the public and we welcome participation from both
faculty members and postgraduate students.
PROGRAMME:
10:30-11:00 Welcome and Introduction
11:00-12:30 HISTORICAL & THEORETICAL CONFIGURATIONS
Dr Catherine Keen (Leeds), "Medieval Views of the City"
Dr Susanne Hauser (Kassel/Berlin), "Perceptions of the Modern City"
12:30-2:00 Lunch
2:00-3:30 SPACES OF EXPERIENCE
Prof Wilhelm Ribhegge (Münster), "Utopian Images of the City"
Prof Nigel Thrift (Bristol), "Contemporary Perceptions of the City"
4:00-5:30 MEMORY & MEDIA
Dr David Midgley (Cambridge), "Memory: Berlin as Palimpsest"
Prof Paul Julian Smith (Cambridge), "Desire: The City in Film"
For further information contact:
Dr David Midgley, St Johnıs College, Cambridge, Tel. +44 (0)1223 337720,
[log in to unmask]
Dr Christian J Emden, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, Tel. +44 (0)1223
338813, [log in to unmask]
URL: http://www.mml.cam.ac.uk/german/researchgroup/home.html
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