Vol. 48, October 2023
Have you published something new in Global Urban History? Are you hosting a conference, workshop, or event? We'd like our members to know!
GUHP is a member-supported organization.
|  | | Join GUHP at the UHA!
Reparations & the Right to the City
The 10th biennial conference of the Urban History Association
Pittsburgh, PA
October 26-29, 2023
GUHP members and authors of new and forthcoming Elements in Global Urban History volumes will discuss their contributions to the Elements series and the state of the field of global urban history.
Session 22 • Fri. 10:15-11:45 am
Roundtable: Cambridge Elements in Global Urban History
- Eric Beverley, Stony Brook University
- Kristin Stapleton, University at Buffalo, SUNY
- Katherine Zubovich, University at Buffalo, SUNY
- Carl Nightingale, Global Urban History Project,
University at Buffalo, SUNY
Other UHA panels featuring or organized by GUHP members include:
Session 14 • Fri. 10:15-11:45 am
Urban and Environmental Inequalities in 20th Century Urban Latin America
Session 24 • Fri. 1:00-2:30 pm
The Value in Visualizing the Unbuilt: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Designs for Pittsburgh
Session 25 • Fri. 1:00-2:30 pm
Social Justice and Urban Activism
Session 43 • Fri. 2:45-4:15 pm
“Disorder at the Border: Inscribing and Resisting Unequal Urban Spaces in Los Angeles, Madrid, Mexico City, and Santo Domingo, 18th-20th Centuries” – A Multimedia Presentation
Session 48 • Sat. 8:30-10:00 am
Policing Colonial Cities in Asia
Session 62 • Sat. 10:15-11:45 am
The Right to the City in Postcolonial India
Session 77 • Sat. 1:00-2:30 pm
Roundtable: New Directions in African Urban History
Session 89 • Sat. 2:45-4:15 pm
Colonialization, Colonialism, and Sovereignty
Session 105 • Sun. 10:15-11:45 am
Roundtable: The Urban and the Global: Toward a History of U.S. Cities in the World
| Related Network Event Spotlight |  | | International Planning History Society
20th Biennial Conference
July 2-5, 2024
Hong Kong
The International Planning History Society’s 2024 conference theme is The (High Density) Metropolis and Region in Planning History. The first day of the conference will be virtual, and the remainder of the conference will be held in person. The organizers invite paper and panel proposals related to the following topics:
- Port city planning;
- Colonial urban planning;
- Post-colonial planning trajectories;
- New Town planning;
- Regions and regional planning in history;
- Cities and the natural environment;
- Planning in high-density urban context;
- Capital accumulation and planning within global cities;
- City development in Southeast Asia and other Asian regions;
- The history of urbanization and planning in the Chinese context;
- Public housing;
- Community planning, health, and public space;
- Transport planning;
- Planning historiography;
- City planning and heritage;
- Planning History pedagogy.
Submission deadline: January 15, 2024 | | The Spatiality and Temporality of Urban Violence: Histories, Rhythms and Ruptures
Edited by Mara Albrecht and Alke Jenss
(Manchester University Press, 2023)
This edited volume asks how the city, with its spatial and temporal configuration and its rhythms, produces and shapes violence, both in terms of the built environment, and through particular 'urban' social relations. The book builds on the insight that violence itself is a spatiotemporal practice with generative capacities, which produces and transforms urban space and time in the long turn, also through the impact of memory. The analytical categories of space and time must be thought as inextricably linked with each other. The book unites case studies on different world regions and historical periods , and thus challenges assumed binaries of cities the global North and South, the past and present. [more]
| | | | Architecture and Urbanism in a Contact Zone: Histories of Difference, Migrancy and Dwelling in Kolkata
By Mark Campbell
(Routledge, 2023)
This book explores how histories of migration, cultural encounter and transculturation have shaped formations of urban space, domestic architecture and cultural modernity in Kolkata from the early colonial period to the beginning of the era of India’s economic liberalization. It charts how these themes were manifest in what was an important ‘contact zone’ in the history of globalization and the modern city. Drawing on a wide range of resources and representations, from urban plans and architectural drawings to European travel journals and Bengali literature and cinema, the book investigates the history of Kolkata through an examination of key urban and architectural spaces across the colonial and postcolonial epochs. [more] | | | | Neo-Assyrian Urban and Regional Development and Governance on the Frontiers of the Empire
By Yi Samuel Chen
Orientalia, vol. 92, Fasc. 1 (2023)
This study is devoted to exploring the standardisation and variation in approaches to urban and regional development and governance on the frontiers of the empire by three Neo-Assyrian kings: Ashurnaṣirpal II (883–859 bc), Tiglath-pileser III (744–727 bc), and Sargon II (721–705 bc), as reflected in their royal inscriptions and archival documents. It is during the reigns of these kings that the Neo-Assyrian state not only emerged as a dominant power in West Asia, but also grew to be a true empire (Frahm 2017). The exploration of their approaches will contribute to our understanding of the forging of the Neo-Assyrian imperial vision and practices to gain systemic, ongoing, and efficient control (indirect or otherwise) of its expanding frontiers whilst developing and consolidating its imperial capitals and heartland. [more]
| | | | 1980 in Parallax: Zbigniew Dmochowski in Nigeria
By Łukasz Stanek
Jencks Foundation, 2023
As part of the Jencks Foundation’s first research theme, ‘isms and ‘wasms: 1980 in parallax, Łukasz Stanek writes about Polish architect and scholar Zbigniew Dmochowski’s research on traditional architecture in Nigeria, and the contradictions and complexities behind his decolonizing ambitions. [more]
| | | | Women and the Fight for Urban Change in Late Francoist Spain*
By Roseanna Webster
Past & Present, August 2023
This article explores how Spanish women formed grassroots groups to fight for the transformation of their neighbourhoods in the late 1950s and 1960s — the latter years of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. Histories of feminism have tended to overlook completely movements in the southern European dictatorships, while accounts of modern Spain often see male politicians and experts as the driving forces shaping the built environment under Franco. But photographs, archival material and oral history interviews show that women demanded ‘cosas básicas’ (basic resources) on a widespread scale in Asturias and Madrid. [more]
| | | | Technodiplomatic processes of territorialization: negotiating Chinese sovereignty through infrastructure in semi-colonial Tianjin, 1901–08
By Jasper Segerink & Greet De Block
Territory, Politics, Governance, vol. 11, no. 5 (2023)
This article analyses processes of territorialization related to the planning of tram lines in early 20th-century Tianjin, one of China’s semi-colonial treaty ports and home to eight foreign extraterritorialities. The authors use the concept of technodiplomacy to foreground how infrastructure planning and the anticipated implications on territorialization operated as a portal through which actors of different states negotiated sovereignty within a constellation of asymmetrical geopolitical relations. [more]
| | | | In the Streets of Le Cap
By Camille Cordier and Carrie Glenn
In the Streets of Le Cap give researchers and students the opportunity to visualize the demographic and economic transformation of Cap Français between the colonial and revolutionary eras. The project is based on the georeferencing of data contained in three cadastres of Cap Français using GIS software. Drawing on these unpublished sources, one can draw up a precise map of the city and its populace in 1776 at the beginning of the American War for Independence, in 1787 just before the French Revolution, and in 1803, during the Haitian War of Independence. [more]
|  | | Kamĩrĩĩthũ Afterlives
By Kenny Cupers and Makau Kitata, in partnership with Kamĩrĩĩthũ theatre group, GoDown Arts Centre, Social Justice Traveling Theatre, Kamĩrĩĩthũ Polytechnic, Wangui Goro
The Kamĩrĩĩthũ open-air theatre is a world-famous initiative in African decolonization. In 1976, Kenyan workers and peasants came together to build an open-air theater and stage a play that soon attracted huge audiences from across the country and beyond. Soon after its establishment, however, the Kenyan government imprisoned Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and demolished the collectively built and managed open-air theatre. Kamĩrĩĩthũ Afterlives aims to mobilize the heritage of Kamĩrĩĩthũ theatre in debates and initiatives for a more just future. [more]
|  | | Land-Grab Universities
By Robert Lee, Tristan Ahtone, Margaret Pearce, Kalen Goodluck, Geoff McGhee, Cody Leff, Katherine Lanpher and Taryn Salinas
Land-Grab Universities is a High Country News project that maps approximately 11 million acres of land expropriated from tribal nations in the United States and used to create land grant universities under the Morrill Act. [more]
| | A Portrait of Tenochtitlan
By Thomas Kole
In 1518, Mexico-Tenochtitlan, once an unassuming settlement in the middle of Lake Texcoco, was one of the largest cities in the world. Today, we call this city Ciudad de Mexico - Mexico City. Not much is left of the old Aztec - or Mexica - capital Tenochtitlan. What did this city, raised from the lake bed by hand, look like? Using historical and archeological sources, this project brings to life Tenochtitlan. [more] | Conferences, Workshops, and Events | | Lecture: Frederick Cooper, Understanding Power Relations in a Colonial Context: Top-Down, Bottom-Up, In-Between
GHI London
October 23, 2023
The German Historical Institute London is is collaborating with the Fritz Thyssen Foundation on a new lecture series on Science, Knowledge, and the Legacy of Empire consisting of eight lectures over fours years. In the third lecture of the series, Frederick Cooper, Professor Emeritus of History at New York University, will discuss "Understanding Power Relations in a Colonial Context: Top-Down, Bottom-Up, In-Between." The talk will ask how we can think about power relations that are unequal, but still relations, pulled and pushed in different directions. It will thus challenge some of the most common frameworks used by historians and social scientists to understand colonial power relations and their postcolonial afterlives. [more]
| | | | Navigating Commodities: Production, Markets, and Consumption in History
University of Tokyo
November 18-19
The event explores the history of commodities in different temporal and regional contexts and their broader significance for questions of power, knowledge, and social change. As a multifaceted topic, commodity history has been examined from a variety of disciplinary angles, including economic and business history, social and cultural history, global and transnational history, anthropology, philosophy, and sociology. This two-day interdisciplinary event aims to identify these intersections and interrogate what they mean for our understanding of commodities, from those deeply embedded in colonial histories like tea and textiles, to modern items that underwent rapid transformation such as contraception and skincare products. [more]
| | | | Political Economy Tokyo Seminar
University of Tokyo
2023-2024
The Political Economy Tokyo Seminar (PoETS) is a monthly English-language research seminar hosted at the University of Tokyo. The seminar brings together historians from Japan and around the world to understand the economy in its relationships with broader social environments such as politics, businesses, science, media, gender, and everyday life. The seminar convenes online regularly on the first or second Tuesday of the month at 5 pm (Japan Standard Time). [more]
| | | Calls for Papers & Proposals | CFP: Transdisciplinary Conference on Suburban Studies
Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic, May 13-14, 2024
The conference aims to explore the intersection between various scholarly fields and the suburban experience, and how literature and other media have portrayed, shaped, and reflected suburban life and its evolution. Suburbanization has been a dominant trend in global urban development in the past century, with urban spaces and suburbs becoming the residence of choice for millions of people around the world. This transformation has had a profound impact on the social, cultural, economic, and political dynamics of urban areas. Literature, history, sociology, psychology, geography, geoinformatics and other disciplines have provided the methodology and research that has been important for the examination, critique, and celebration of the modern suburban experience, from its inception in the early 20th century to the present day. [more]
Submission deadline: October 30, 2023
| CFP: Scholarly Book on Suburban Studies
This interdisciplinary book aims to explore the complex, diverse, and dynamic nature of suburbs, their histories, and their futures. The book will seek to engage with a wide range of topics and themes related to sub/urban spaces, cultures, politics, and environments. Chapter proposals welcome from scholars across various disciplines, including but not limited to literature, sociology, history, anthropology, urban studies, geography, geoinformatics, urban planning, environmental studies, and cultural studies. Contributions should critically examine suburbs as spaces of social, economic, and political inequality and exclusion, as well as spaces of creativity, innovation, and resistance. [more]
Submission deadline: October 31, 2023
| CFP: “The Intimacies of Empire”: A Workshop for Graduate Students and Early Career Researchers
Charlottesville, NC/Hybrid
The French Colonial Historical Society and the University of Virginia are pleased to invite proposals from graduate students and early career researchers for a hybrid, interdisciplinary workshop on “The Intimacies of Empire.” Led by members of FCHS and the UVA French, History, and Francophone Studies community, including the editors of the French Colonial History journal, the workshop will offer space for in-depth, constructive discussion of pre-circulated works-in-progress, such as article manuscripts, dissertation or book chapters, or pieces intended for non-academic audiences, on the theme of the FCHS conference, to be held in Charlottesville May 23-25, 2024, and of a special issue of French Colonial History co-edited by Drs. Sue Peabody and Robin Mitchell. [more]
Submission deadline: November 1, 2023
|
CFP: Democratizing, Diversifying, and Decolonizing the World History Survey
World History Bulletin
World History Bulletin is seeking quality research essays, lesson plans, and classroom activities for inclusion in its upcoming Fall 2023 issue, “Democratizing, Diversifying, and Decolonizing the World History Survey.” Guest-edited by John Curry, “Democratizing, Diversifying, and Decolonizing the World History Survey” explores the ways in which world historians and instructors can introduce, examine, and complicate an array of topics such as slavery, colonialism, world wars, and climate crisis in the world history classroom. [more]
Submission deadline: November 10, 2023
| CFP: 7th Annual Graduate Workshop: “New and Emerging Studies of the Spanish Colonial Borderlands”
Huntington Library, San Marino, CA
March 15, 2024
This workshop to be held on Friday March 15, 2024, seeks to bring together advanced graduate students in the field of the Spanish Borderlands to bolster intellectual exchange and create community among graduate students and interested faculty working on similar or related topics. Successful workshop presentation proposals should highlight new and emerging research on the Spanish Borderlands and focus on some aspect of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, or related regions from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. [more]
Submission deadline: November 15, 2023
| CFP: 7th World Conference of the International Federation for Public History
University of Luxembourg
September 3-7, 2024
The field of public history is expanding rapidly. Public history fosters accessibility, engagement, and participation for a wide range of people. The links between “history” and “publics” can take many forms including different audiences, contributors, spaces, projects, and uses of the past. In line with previous IFPH conferences, the 2024 event has an open call that invites proposals and discussions on history for, with, by, of, in, or among different publics. [more]
Submission deadline: November 15, 2023
| CFP: Race and Slavery Narratives in the European Colonial Empires: Interdisciplinary Approaches (15th-20th centuries)
Praia, Cape Verde
January 31-February 1, 2024
Proposals are invited for twenty-minutes papers which explore any aspect of the relationship between race and slavery in the European colonial empires. Papers are welcome from any academic discipline. Interdisciplinary papers and discussions on the relationship between race and slavery in the European colonies in Africa are particularly encouraged. Proposal can be submitted in English, Portuguese, French, Spanish and Italian (at the conference itself, for papers presented in any language beside English, an extended English abstract will be required). [more]
Submission deadline: November 30, 2023
| Fellowships, Grants, & Awards | | Fung Global Fellows Program
Princeton University
During the academic year 2024-25, the program theme will be “Colonial Residues.” Applicants may address any region of the world, past and present, and may be from any disciplinary background in the humanities and social sciences. [more]
Eligibility: Scholars who received their Ph.D. or equivalent no earlier than September 1, 2014. Applicants must hold a faculty appointment, a professional research appointment, or be established independent scholars outside the United States at the time of application, to which they are expected to return at the conclusion of the fellowship.
Application deadline: November 15, 2023
| | | | Global History Fellowship
Weatherhead Research Cluster
Harvard University
The Weatherhead Research Cluster at Harvard University identifies and supports outstanding scholars whose work responds to the growing interest in the encompassing study of global history. We seek to organize a community of scholars interested in the systematic scrutiny of developments that have unfolded across national, regional, and continental boundaries and who propose to analyze the interconnections—cultural, economic, ecological, political and demographic—among world societies. [more]
Application deadline: December 1, 2023
| | | | Southern African History Book Prize
The Southern African Historical Society and the Historical Association of South Africa are inaugurating a book prize for the best scholarly history publication in book form. The book should be published by a southern African-based press and should be of scholarly and academic merit, as recognised by peers. The first prize will be awarded at the 29th Biennial SAHS conference at the University of Johannesburg in June 2024 and will consider books published with an ISBN publication date of 2021 or 2022. [more]
Application deadline: January 10, 2024 | | | |