Vol. 15, December 2019.
Have you published something new in Global Urban History?
We'd like our members to know. Contact Ayan Meer with details.
GUHP is now a member-supported organization. To join visit our Homepage. | | Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing
by Stuart Schrader, Johns Hopkins University, USA
(University of California Press, 2019)
In this groundbreaking exposé, Stuart Schrader shows how the United States projected imperial power overseas through police training and technical assistance—and how this effort reverberated to shape the policing of city streets at home. Examining diverse records, Schrader reveals how U.S. police leaders envisioned the beat to be as wide as the globe and worked to put everyday policing at the core of the Cold War project of counterinsurgency. A “smoking gun” book, Badges without Borders offers a new account of the War on Crime, “law and order” politics, and global counterinsurgency, revealing the connections between foreign and domestic racial control.[more]
| | | | Conference Report: 'The Pursuit of Global Urban History', Leicester, 11-12 July 2019.
by Alistair Kefford, University of Leicester, UK.
Urban History, November 2019.
In July 2019, the Centre for Urban History at the University of Leicester hosted the first - though certainly not the last - Global Urban History Conference. Organised around the idea of “The pursuit of global urban history”, the conference was as much an interrogation of what it might mean to do urban history globally, and what forms this could take, as it was a showcase for the fruits of an emergent field of study. In conjunction with the remarkable range of papers presented - both geographically and conceptually - this made for a particularly lively and stimulating conference.
[Access the article here] | | | | "The Politics of Disembarkation: Empire, Shipping, and Labor in the Port of Durban, 1897-1947"
by Jonathan Hyslop, Colgate University, USA.
International Labor and Working Class History, Spring 2018
This article examines the labor politics of race in Durban harbor between 1897 and 1947. It approaches the subject from an analysis of labor in a global context. The article aims to move away from a solely “national” focus on the South African state and instead to look “up” toward connections to the British Empire, the world economy, and global social and political movements, and “down” towards Durban itself. This article contends that in order to understand the place of working class Durban in an imperial world, we need to incorporate the shipping industry into other labor histories, studying how the movement of vessels and the actions of seafarers concretely linked these spatial levels.
[Access the article here] | | | Global Urban Footprint Maps
The GUF maps show two land cover categories (e. g. in a B&W representation): Built-up areas (vertical structures only) in black and non-built-up surfaces in white; in addition, areas of no coverage by theTSX/TDX satellites (NoData) are coded in grey (most parts of the oceans). The focus on two categories clearly highlights the settlement patterns, improving the ability to analyze and compare them with other built-up areas across the world, in an urban or in a rural context. Unlike previous approaches, the fully automatic evaluation procedure detects the characteristic vertical structures of human habitations are primarily buildings. In contrast, areas used for infrastructure purposes, like roads, are not mapped. This is why broad urban canyons or expanses of greenery within the cities are shown as white corridors and patches.
[See maps here] | Related Networks and Events
| | Princeton-Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities
Call for Fellows, 2020-21
The Princeton-Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities is an interdisciplinary program supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that combines the efforts of a diverse group of faculty, programs, and schools to develop a dynamic understanding of urban issues past, present, and future.
The initiative seeks to hire Mellon Fellows with an abiding interest in multi-disciplinary work focused on the intersection of architecture, urbanism, and the humanities. Candidates can come from any discipline. They may be academics, designers, and/or practicing writers or artists.[more]
| | | | Black Metropolis Research Consortium
Call for Applications, 2020
Through an international competition, the BMRC offers 1-month residential fellowships in the City of Chicago for its Summer Short-term Fellowship Program. The Summer Short-term Fellowship Program has engaged scholars, artists, writers, and public historians to better formulate new historical narratives of Chicago’s past. The new, original research and art developed through this program is significant as it illuminates the national and international importance of Chicago’s African American community. [more]
| | | | Call for Papers: "Where Empires Collide: Dockyards and Naval Bases In and Around the Indian Ocean"
London, April 2020
This one-day conference - organized by the Naval Dockyards Society - will examine the role of naval bases and other naval support facilities in the Indian Ocean and its inlets, the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. [more] | | | | Call for Papers: "Identities and the Cities: Critical Urban Studies"
Venice, 24-25 January 2020
As part of the 8th Euroacademia Global Forum on Critical Studies, this panel aims at adopting a wide-lens inter-disciplinary approach, while focusing on various processes affecting identities in the urban context in its global-regional-national-local interplay. You can apply on-line by completing the Application Form on the conference website or by sending a 300 words titled abstract together with the details of contact and affiliation by the 5th of December 2019.
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