Final Call for Papers
AAG Conference, Las Vegas, 22-27 March 2009
CALCUTTA'S MODERNITIES
co-sponsored: Urban Geography Specialty Group, Asian Geography Specialty
Group, Cultural Geography Specialty Group
Studies of urban modernity are canonic to urban geography, sociology,
social history and political economy. Yet, often, as Jennifer Robinson
has recently noted, "colonial and neo-imperial power relations...remain
deeply embedded in the assumptions and practices of much contemporary
urban theory" (2006:2). Diverting the hegemonic gaze in 'world cities',
'global cities' and 'metropolitan' studies away from a continuing return
to privileging hierarchies of urban influence, i.e., wealthy Western
cities (Prakash, 2008), this session proposes a focus through one city,
Calcutta, in order to open discussions towards a postcolonial urban
theory; this work thus seeks to legitimize the specificities of a key
modern city whose role, despite its infamy and influence, remains
under-appreciated in Anglophone academic literature. Calcutta's
histories are integrally constituted through narratives of modernity
(colonialism, trade, industry, architecture, diaspora, nationalisms,
state conflict, inequality, etc). Yet, urban modernity is rarely read
through the lens of a postcolonial city like Calcutta. What do the
spaces and places of Calcutta (territorial, imagined, dispersed and
diverse) have to say to how we continue to construct narratives of urban
modernity and the city? How is its place in the history of empire
relevant to contemporary worries about world cities and global cities?
It too was once a world city, a second city of empire, a City of
Palaces. How does its supposed wane in global influence speak to
constructing contemporary debates around the urban, development,
creativity, neo-liberalizing economies, mobility, identity, etc? What
does this fascinating, diverse, lovely and troubled city have to say to
contemporary human geographies?
This session aims to gather a growing interest and work on Calcutta's
past and present to address its key place in the social, cultural,
historical and economic geographies of the present.
Papers are welcomed on such topics as (but not limited to...):
* contemporary politics of re-naming
* new and returning urban and suburban developments
* landscapes of Calcutta's diasporic identities
* geographies of Calcutta's historic ethnic diversity (Jewish,
Chinese, Greek, etc).
* cultural politics in a changing India
* ruin as immanence in urban modernity
* consumption and exhibition
* urbanizing mobilities
* exurban dispossession and resistance
* food and the city
* politics and violence, then and now
* sexualities and the post-colonial city
* alternative economies in Calcutta
* Calcutta and representation
* geographies of the city's musical culture
* visual cultures of urban Bengal
* Mrinal Sen, Ritwik Ghatak and the "new" Calcutta
* Jibanananda Das and the "new" Calcutta
Authors are asked to submit a short abstract (250 words) to the session
organizer, Mark Jackson <[log in to unmask]>, by October 5th
________________________________
Mark Jackson
Lecturer in Human Geography
School of Geographical Sciences
University of Bristol
Bristol, BS8 1SS
United Kingdom
tel: +44 117 928 9109
fax: +44 117 928 7878
http://www.ggy.bris.ac.uk/staff/staff_jackson.html
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