CFP: Cityscapes

CALL FOR PAPERS
“Cityscapes” Conference

March 27 – 30, 2008
Cleveland, Ohio

Proposal deadline:  September 14, 2007

Sponsored by
The Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities and The Cleveland Institute of Art
The Cleveland Institute of Art and the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities of Case Western Reserve University will collaboratively host a conference on “Cityscapes,” to be held March 27-30, 2008.  This conference is intended to explore the intersections between the urban environment, the humanities, and social change.

The conference considers the city as a physical, political, economic, and social entity and as a real and imagined place that has inspired and continues to inform some of the most important work in the humanities. The city can be described as a:

-built environment and a confluence of architectural design and urban planning
-public space shaped by dynamics of race, gender, and class
-concentration of technology and labor
-locus for the political economy as well as institutions of church, state, education, and culture, and community
-site of resistance and memory
-situated in a larger network constituted by the local, regional, national, international, and global

This conference seeks to explore what the arts and humanities can contribute to our understanding of the city. We seek papers that investigate both the historic constitutive factors of the city and issues of urbanism today.  The conference aims to explore the city as a crucible of creative change, investigating its relationship with human cultures of the past and present and its place in envisioning possible futures. This latter aspect is especially significant today, when many cities, particularly older cities like Cleveland, are challenged by profound shifts in population, infrastructure, politics, self-identity as well as the globalization of capital and degradation of the environment.

Questions to be considered include:
-What has defined, demarcated, and signified the cityscape?
-How do past representations relate to those generated today?
-How have changing geopolitics – locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally – and the emergence of cosmopolitanism and globalization shaped the cityscape and its representation(s)?
-What particular experiences of the city have informed the critical commentary of the arts and humanities and vice versa?
-What role do the arts and humanities play in relation to social change in the city? How do the arts and humanities articulate modernist and anti-modernist or utopian and dystopian visions of the city?
-How have representations of the city—in word and image—helped to conceptualize the city and/or offer critical critique that can, in turn, reshape or re-imagine the city?
-In our hyper-mediated image-saturated world, what is the role of visual culture and the humanities in conveying an understanding of the social conditions of urbanism?

The symposium welcomes papers that explore the relationship between cityscape and the humanities (Archaeology, Art, Art History, Classics, English, Film Studies, History, Linguistics, Modern Languages and Literatures, Media Studies, Music, Philosophy, Religion, Theater and Dance) in belief that these disciplines bring a necessary, yet previously under-represented, contribution to discussions of urbanism.

Paper proposals must include:
-200 word abstract (1 page);
-Cover letter delineating the proposed speaker’s expertise in the selected topic as well as audio-visual needs to support the presentation;
-C.V. (no more than 3 pages) that includes mailing address, phone number, and e-mail address
-Self-addressed postcard (for confirmation of receipt of submission) or request for confirmation if submitting electronically.

Conference presentations are expected to be 20 minutes in length; it is expected that the papers will not have been presented elsewhere.

Submission Deadline:  Due date for submission/postmark: 14 September 2007.

Submit to:  All inquiries and paper proposals should be directed to
Dr. Susan Martis, Research Associate
Baker Nord Center for the Humanities
Clark Hall 207
Case Western Reserve University
10900 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland OH 44106-7120
Phone: 216-368-2242
susan.martis@case.edu
www.bakernord.org

Hand-deliveries:
           Dr. Susan Martis
           Clark Hall 207
           11130 Bellflower Road