Apologies for cross-posting...we're looking for one or two more papers.
Call for Papers: Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, San
Francisco, April 17-21, 2007
From the Shining City to New Jack City: Urban Culture in 80s America
In his January 1989 farewell address, Ronald Reagan returned once more to John
Winthrop’s image of the United States as a shining city on a hill.
This was not
only an idealized America, but also the country he found standing on that
“winter night.” And yet the “city streets” Reagan said he would “walk
off into”
hardly matched the departing President's lofty language. Urban poverty and
homelessness rose dramatically in the 1980s, fueled by the austere policies of
the Reagan Revolution. Meanwhile, the President spun tales of
“welfare queens,”
the spread of AIDS was met with overwhelming silence, and a supply of crack
cocaine with shadowy Cold War ties ravaged urban neighborhoods.
These and other narratives have become part of our collective memory (or
amnesia), set off from and yet frequently compared to a new
geopolitical moment.
As such, they are ripe for examination from historical scholars, particularly
those working with the cultural productions that rest emphatically between and
beyond the dreams and nightmares offered up by Reagan and his supporters. As
with earlier episodes of urban suffering, many of the most insightful accounts
of the era can be found in cultural movements rooted firmly, if diversely, in
city spaces, from the explosive allusions and extravagant aspirations
of hip-hop
to the troubled literary and cinematic satires of life on Wall Street.
We seek
papers that work with these and other texts and performances to
illuminate urban
culture in 80s America, and which seek to ground the often-bewildering
cultural
trends of the decade in geographic terrain. Given the proximity to
the present,
we are also interested in examining the relationship between the
historicization
of urban culture and its critical contemporary possibilities.
Possible topics might include:
- Reagan's Urbanism, and its Opponents
- ‘Greed is good’: Landscapes of Commerce and Consumption
- Street Knowledge: The Geographies of Hip-hop
- The Second Cold War and Apocalyptic Cities
- ‘I want my MTV’: Popular Culture, Technology, and Urban Experience
- AIDS, Social Justice, and the Health of Cities
- Crime, Crack, and the Demonization of Inner Cities
- Towards a People’s Geography of the 1980s
- Memory, Nostalgia, and the Contemporary Resonance of the 80s City
Please send abstracts of 250 words or less by 13 October 2006 to both session
organizers:
Matthew Farish
Department of Geography, University of Toronto
[log in to unmask]
Clayton Rosati
Department of Geography, University of Vermont
[log in to unmask]
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