Vol. 43, May 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.
| GUHP Essay Prizes for Emerging Scholars
Up to three GUHP Essay Prizes will be awarded annually to early-career scholars for unpublished essays associated with graduate and post-graduate work in the field of Global Urban History. Eligible applicants should be GUHP members and can include graduate students, post-graduate scholars not in a tenure-track position, or early career scholars in the first three years of a tenure track position at the time of submission. Scholars who work at institutions in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia are especially encouraged to apply, as are scholars who work on periods before 1850.
Essays must be no longer than 8,000 words in English inclusive of citations, be based on original research, contain full citations to archival and relevant secondary sources, and engage with critical themes in global urban history. Essay topics can include studies of cities as creations and creators of larger-scale historical phenomena of all kinds - from empires and capitalism to global cultural communities and ecosystems; of connective, cross-border, ocean-, river- or borderland urban history; of comparative or connective urban histories; of urban environmental history; and/or studies that in general expand historical research to cities and urban regions that are underrepresented in the current urban historical literature.[more]
Application deadline: September 29, 2023 |  | | Dream Conversation on Cities and the Anthropocene
Carl Nightingale, “Toward an Urban History of the Anthropocene”
May 22, 2023
1 PM GMT/12PM UCT
University of Leicester
Hybrid Event
In person: Council Room 1, Fielding Johnson Building
This lecture uses the concept “Our Urban Planet” to explore how global urban historians can contribute to - and learn from - natural scientists who propose the term Anthropocene as the name of a new Epoch in the Geological Time Scale distinguished by what one of them calls the “superpower” of “human activities.” Building on insights from the author’s book Earthopolis: A Biography of Our Urban Planet (Cambridge 2022), the talk will explore what happens when urban historians radically expand our sense of time, urban space, and our definition of cities - to think of them as spaces where humans gamble on concentrated harvests of energy from the Sun and Earth to produce, amplify, and deploy our power in many ways not possible in smaller settlements alone. The talk will propose a geography and a chronology of the highly unequal expansions and contractions of city-amplified spatial power and its many instruments, as well as its periods of acceleration to planetary dimensions.
Co-sponsored by the Centre for Urban History, the Institute for Environmental Futures, and GUHP | Related Network Event Spotlight | | 50 years of the Urban History Journal Conference
The State of Urban History: Past, Present, Future
University of Leicester, July 11-13, 2023
GUHP-sponsored panels
GUHP Dream Conversation on the Anthropocene
Round Table: Urban pasts, Urban futures - a roundtable on the Anthropocene
Tuesday July 11, 11:15-12:45
GUHP Dream Conversations on Cities, Empires, and their (Dis)contents
Empires and Global Urban History
Wednesday, July 12 1430-1600
GUHP Dream Conversations on Theory For, Of, and By Urban Historians
Round Table: Urban theory of, for, and by urban historians: the state of a two-year conversation at the Global Urban History Project
Thursday, July 13, 11:30-13:00
| | The House in the Rue Saint-Fiacre: A Social History of Property in Revolutionary Paris
By H. B. Callaway
Harvard University Press, 2023
Property reform was at the heart of the French Revolution. As lawmakers proclaimed at the time, and as historians have long echoed, the Revolution created modern property rights. Under the new regime, property was redefined as an individual right to which all citizens were entitled. Yet as the state seized assets and prepared them for sale, administrators quickly found that realizing the dream of democratic property rights was far more complicated than simply rewriting laws. This bold account of property reform during the French Revolution argues that the lofty democratic ideals enshrined by revolutionary leaders were rarely secured in practice—with lasting consequences. [more]
| | | | The World Wide Web of Work
By Marcel van der Linden
UCL Press, 2023
Global Labour History has rapidly gained ground as a field of study in the 21st century, attracting interest in the Global South and North alike. Scholars derive inspiration from the broad perspective and the effort to perceive connections between global trends over time in work and labour relations, incorporating slaves, indentured labourers and sharecroppers, housewives and domestic servants. Casting this sweeping analytical gaze, The World Wide Web of Work discusses the core concepts ‘capitalism’ and ‘workers’, and refines notions such as ‘coerced labour’, ‘household strategies’ and ‘labour markets.' [more] | | | | Special Issue: Global Microhistory of the Local and the Global
Journal of Early Modern History
March 2023
This Special Issue addresses recent discussions of the potential historical approach of “global microhistory.” The six articles gathered here are based in the study of Africa, South Asia, the northwest Pacific coast of North America, and Europe, as well as in the recent methodologies of global history and microhistory. They focus on methodology and on the empirical study of ways of connecting local spaces and networks with global dynamics. All are set in social and economic formations that have too often been bypassed in the cultural and literary approaches of some microhistory and the political approaches of some global history.[more]
| | | Conferences, Workshops, and Events | | Worlds Apart? Futures of Global History International Conference
Vienna, Austria, May 25-26, 2023
Taking recent criticism of global history as a starting point, the event seeks to discuss the future pathways of global history. Where is the field of global history headed and how can a more decentralized and diverse practice be achieved? What methods, narratives, and historiographical traditions need to be included to open the field to a broader range of scholars? What does a fairer global history look like? [more]
| | | | Copying and Imitation in Early Modern Architecture International Conference
Ghent, June 15-16, 2023
This international conference starts from the premise that practices of imitation and copying were integral to the making of architecture in early modern Europe. Extending from classical rhetoric, imitation was said to entail an element of invention, which allowed for the adaptation and skilled use of models. Following this formulation, scholars of early modern architecture have written extensively about the numerous parallels between literary and architectural theory, mining the former in devising frameworks for the conceptualization of architecture. By contrast, this conference seeks to direct attention to verifiable practices and material documentation of copying and imitation in the workshop and on the building site, and how this evidence sheds new light on the production of architecture.[more]
| | | | Preliminary Schedule of Book Panels at Lagos Studies Association Conference
University of Lagos/Zoom, June 20-24, 2023
The LSA is has released the preliminary schedule of book panels at the 7th edition of its annual conference. All 120 sessions of the conference, including the book panels, will be accessible, free of charge, to all audience attending physically at the University of Lagos and virtually across the world. Book panels will be held between June 22-24.From African literature, film, religion, and history, to diaspora, digital culture, visual art, and urban, gender, and feminist studies, twenty-one book panels will celebrate the achievements of scholars, while also engaging with ideas in all their divergent manifestations.[more]
| | | Calls for Papers & Proposals | CFP: Associazione Italian di Storia Urbana, Beyond the Gaze: Interpreting and Understanding the City
Ferrara, September 13-16, 2023
The 11th International AISU Congress calls for reflections and comparisons that go beyond the gaze, to try instead to interpret urban phenomena in terms of "complexity," "fluidity," and "coexistence" in all the multiple aspects of the city in the history of its being and becoming; aspects that are different and sometimes interpenetrating with each other. Going beyond the gaze, also means overcoming social and cultural barriers, exploring conditions of inequality and hidden, subterranean or elusive places, declining the city under the microscope and at the same time looking at it through a broad perspective.[more]
Deadline for proposals: May 15, 2023
| CFP: Thirteenth Annual Conference of the Midwest World History Association
Roosevelt University (Chicago, IL), September 22-23, 2023
The Midwest World History Association is pleased to announce a call for paper, poster, panel, roundtable, and workshop proposals for its annual conference to be held at Roosevelt University in Chicago, Illinois on September 22-23, 2022. The conference theme is “Outcasts, Pariahs, and Criminals: Histories of Others and Othering.” This theme builds off of last year’s “Difficult Histories” by highlighting the histories of and by those who have been othered. As many political leaders move to “shield people from feeling ‘discomfort’ over historic actions by their race, nationality or gender,” this theme is intended to invite presentations and discussions on how world historians at all levels – high school, community college, or university - can best create spaces within which to explore, share, teach and learn about contested topics.[more]
Deadline for proposals: May 15, 2023
| CFP: Circulations of Social Urbanism and Informal Settlement Upgrading
Urban Studies Foundation Seminar Series
Hybrid (in-person and online), 2023-2024
The seminar series addresses the broader actors, circuits, and geographies involved in the circulation and mobility of urban models in and from Latin America. Together the seminars investigate the role of a range of actors, including experts and politicians, but also alternative actors such as those involved in urban social movements and alternative networks of “experts”, that are interwoven in policy mobility processes. The four seminars are: Circulations of social urbanism and informal settlement upgrading: between alternative and mainstream urban models (Mexico City, October 26-27th, 2023), Gender, care, and Latin American experiments in local governance (Bogota, March 2024), Alternative circuits and stakeholders (Buenos Aires, May 2024), and Theory and practice: moving the conversation forward (100% virtual, June 2024). [more]
Application Deadline: May 25, 2023
| CFP: Society of Architectural Historians 77th International Conference
Albuquerque, April 17-21, 2024
Submit to one of 33 thematic sessions, the Graduate Student Lightning Talks, or the Open Sessions (if your research does not fit into any of the thematic sessions). SAH encourages submissions from architectural, landscape, and urban historians; museum curators; preservationists; independent scholars; architects; scholars in related fields; and members of SAH chapters, Affiliate Groups, and partner organizations.[more]
Application Deadline: June 6, 2023
| CFP: Archives of Revolution
John Carter Brown Library
Providence, June 20-22, 2024
Creating, exploring, promoting, preserving and most of all critically engaging with the nature and process of archives and archiving helps us to understand the past that we’re making. As archivists, literary scholars, librarians, historians, and more, we all interact with and help shape the past through its material and textual remains. Sharing more about the process of making archives of revolution, of using them, and of their changing nature in the twenty-first century, prompts new conversations about the past. It is also a way of engaging scholars, archivists, and the public in a civil conversation about who owns it, has owned it, and who shapes it.[more]
Application Deadline: August 15, 2023
| CFP: AHA Perspectives articles on “urbanism and rurality”
The American Historical Association’s Perspectives on History seeks pitches for articles or other short-form writing related to urbanism and rurality for its 2023-2024 issues.[more] | Fellowships, Grants, & Awards | | Project Fellows
Transatlantic Dialogue on the Industrial Heartlands: Shaping the Future
Das Progressive Zentrum
This three-year project and its partners from the U.S. and Germany are dedicated to creating new opportunities in old industrial heartlands in both countries by forging a transatlantic dialogue, exchanging best practices and developing political strategies and policy solutions for a better, greener and more democratic future in the “places that don’t matter.” Young leaders, practitioners, and thinkers up until the age of 35 from Germany and the US who are passionate about the industrial heartlands and interested in shaping a better, greener, and more democratic future through transatlantic dialogue.[more]
Application deadline: May 22, 2023
| | | | Funded Book Workshops
Royal Historical Society, 2023-2024
Awards will support historians, currently working on a second or third major research project, and which will lead to publication of a monograph. The Book Workshops will enable an author to bring together fellow scholars to discuss and develop the manuscript of a scholarly monograph. Must be a member of the Society.[more]
Application deadline: June 12, 2023
| | | | International Fellowships
Urban Studies Foundation
Applications are invited to the USF’s International Fellowships for urban scholars from the Global South. Each award will cover the cost of a sabbatical period at a university of the candidate’s choice, worldwide, for the purpose of writing-up the candidate’s existing research findings in the form of publishable articles and/or a book. The proposed work should be completed under the guidance of a chosen mentor in the candidate’s field of study. Funding is available for a period ranging between 3-9 months, and eligible research may cover any theme pertinent to a better understanding of urban realities in the Global South.[more]
Application deadline: June 20, 2023 | | | |