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News Archive February 200925/2/2009 Authors: Gayle Letherby and Gillilan Reynolds, Ashgate ISBN: 978-0-7546-7034-6 This title is also available as an eBook, ISBN 978-0-7546-9272-0 It is increasingly acknowledged that an analysis of emotions is necessary to fully understand the social world, and recent research on transport, travel and mobilities has begun to consider the gendered nature of public and personal life in relation to this sphere. The focus of this multidisciplinary and auto/biographical volume is the emotional relationship that individuals and groups have with different means of travel. Attention is given to a variety of travel experiences, including travelling in trains, planes, cars, buses and ships, as well as biking, cycling, running and walking, from the perspective of travellers and those who earn their living in assisting these experiences of others. Imaginary travel and the relationships between art and travel are also considered. Adopting innovative approaches to experiential material ranging from personal memories to empirical research, Gendered Journeys, Mobile Emotions opens up and illuminates an interdisciplinary debate about the gendered, emotive and emotional nature of travelling. 22/2/2009 12/02/2009 Hosted by the School of Social Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa 10-14 September 2009 The African Borderlands Research Network - ABORNE (http://www.aborne.org/) - is an interdisciplinary network of over 70 academic researchers and institutions in Europe, Africa and North America. Its members are from all disciplines of the social sciences, with an
emphasis on anthropology and history. They share a long-term interest in
all aspects of international borders and trans-boundary phenomena in
Africa. The emphasis is largely on borderlands as physical spaces and ABORNE will hold it's third annual meeting at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, from 10-14 September 2009. Papers are invited from scholars of African borderlands and borders at all levels. Financial support is available for participants. Both 'border theory' and border studies as a field owe much of their
cross-disciplinary origins and development to scholars of the American
Southwest. By the late 1990s, spurred by the rapid development of the
European Union, Europeanist scholars had contributed not only a wealth
of empirical studies but also significant theoretical insights and
concepts to border studies. What then of Africa, the peripheral poor
relation of the area studies' family? African borders have often been
seen as incomplete or exceptional in relation to mainstream border There are many characteristics of border management, border life, and
borderlanders that operate at borders everywhere, that inform the
comparative and analytical foundations of border theory, and to which
African borders are no exceptions. Indeed, African borders often Apart from furthering existing border theory, the empirical and theoretical insights gained from studying African borderlands are already transforming the wider field. ABORNE's 2009 annual meeting will offer a unique platform for both established experts in the field and younger scholars with empirical insights "fresh from the field" to explore the most fruitful avenues of investigation. Together, we will seek to contribute more to the field than an additional set of empirical case studies. We aim to sharpen the cutting edge of the borderlands research agenda for years to come, and thereby contribute to the re-making of border theory in the 21st century. Prospective areas of current and future enquiry include the meaning of
'national' borders in pre-, post-, multi- or trans-national societies.
While the Westphalian map remains in place, giving borders transnational
political identities of their own, to what extent do they have stability
as cultural markers? Should we start to consider national differences as
purely political and economic matters: are there customs stations for
customs? Using the idea of borders as conduits, how do borders
facilitate cultural exchange just as they equilibrate the disparities of We invite paper submissions on the following themes, but also welcome other related topics: 1. Conceptual frameworks for borderland research in Africa and the world Within this wide range of themes, we are seeking papers with the following characteristics: * Papers that are conceptual in nature; Titles and abstracts are due by 30 April, 2009. To apply, please send
the following information to both David Coplan (david.coplan@wits.ac.za)
and Tara Polzer (tara.polzer@wits.ac.za): For more information please contact David Coplan (David.Coplan@wits.ac.za), Tara Polzer (Tara.Polzer@wits.ac.za) or Wolfgang Zeller (wolfgang.zeller@helsinki.fi) or see http://www.aborne.org/ Tara Polzer Email: tara.polzer@wits.ac.za General Contact Details for Forced Migration Studies Programme 11/02/2009 Journées de la Commission de Géographie du tourisme et des loisirs Comité National Français de Géographie Sion, 15-17 juin 2009 L’approche géographique du tourisme permet une perspective d'une part sur les multiples phénomènes géographiques dont le tourisme est co-constitutif, et, d'autre part, sur les différentes dimensions géographiques du tourisme. Elle s'insère ainsi dans un contexte disciplinaire et interdisciplinaire où de multiples conceptualisations se développent plus ou moins rapidement. Si les investigations empiriques - partiellement enregistrées par les différentes journées précédentes de la commission - réussissent à mettre au jour des phénomènes nouveaux et à décrire avec précision les contenus du tourisme, l'apport de la théorie et la confrontation entre différentes perspectives, démarches, modèles et concepts - des "imaginations géographiques" - ont été moins élaborées. D'où l'importance du questionnement du lien entre théorie, tourisme et géographie. 1. Quels théories et modèles novateurs pour appréhender avec plus de pertinence le tourisme? Le tourisme se développe ; les manières des géographes de modéliser et conceptualiser le phénomène aussi. Dans un contexte où l'importation de nombreux modèles, théories et concepts, catégories - et donc l'amarrage de la géographie aux sciences humaines et sociales - est dorénavant monnaie courante, on peut se poser la question de savoir quelles descriptions, explications et interprétations nouvelles sont possibles à l'aide de nouveaux outils conceptuels. Peu importe l'origine de ceux-ci : la complexité du phénomène nécessite une créativité de la part des géographes. On peut lister, à titre indicatif, quelques-unes des élaborations théoriques qui pourraient s'avérer pertinentes pour l'analyse du phénomène : 1. Concernant la caractérisation du champ phénoménal, le tourisme est construit comme "scapes and flows" (Urry, 2000), prolongeant en cela Appadurai (1996) et ses "ethnoscapes" afin de désigner une réalité mouvante. Ce ne sont là que quelques exemples sans visée exhaustive et nous invitons volontiers à proposer d’autres manières de penser le tourisme. Deux aspects complémentaires pourraient être évoqués. Primo, les apports des différentes disciplines (psychologie, économie, sociologie, anthropologie, politologie, psychanalyse, histoire, etc.) pourraient aussi être convoqués afin de féconder les recherches géographiques sur le tourisme dans une optique d’hybridation (Dogan & Pahre, 1991). Secundo, cette investigation des concepts novateurs peut également porter, dans une visée réflexive, sur l’épistémologie de la géographie du tourisme, sur les successions des paradigmes ainsi que sur les modèles de l'homme utilisés pour désigner le touriste ou les autres acteurs du tourisme etc.. Il convient en effet d'exercer la critique afin que la mesure de la pertinence de ces modèles continue. Cela permettrait également d'identifier des points aveugles des perspectives théoriques développées dans l’approche géographique du tourisme. 2. Quelles implications la prise en compte du tourisme a-t-elle pour les théories et modèles en géographie ? Or, on peut avancer l’argument suivant : l'injection de phénomènes touristiques dans les modèles et théories de la géographie fait opérer un changement radical à ceux-ci. L'on peut supposer que la prise en compte du touristique rend inopérable ou au mieux nécessite d'amender les théories et modèles en géographie. La question se pose ainsi : "la géographie peut-elle s'agréger à un tel phénomène, l'ériger en objet propre et le traiter sans elle-même se remettre, un tant soit peu, en cause ?" (Lazzarotti, p. 262, in Stock, 2003). La réponse est à l'évidence un défi immense pour les chercheurs : il s'agit d'une part de cerner l'apport des phénomènes touristiques pour la modélisation en géographie et, d'autre part, proposer à terme de nouvelles "modélisations avec tourisme". Il s'agit là d'un défi, car il convient de mettre à l'épreuve l'ensemble des modèles géographiques et tester ainsi leur congruence avec les phénomènes touristiques. Les domaines que l'on peut d'ores et déjà évoquer sont : 1. La centralité comme concept clé des modèles d'urbanisation et d'organisation des systèmes urbains où les pratiques touristiques et les lieux touristiques n’ont pas encore trouvé leur place. On peut également revenir sur l’ensemble de la géographie urbaine qui se focalise sur les villes comme seul type de lieu urbain, mais évacue les stations touristiques et la part du tourisme dans les processus d'urbanisation, et ce à tous les niveaux d’échelle. Par exemple, les pratiques de la ville restent centrées sur les résidents et oublient les pratiques en situation touristique (« habiter touristiquement »).
Les communications attendues pourraient viser à enrichir la théorie géographique par la prise en compte du tourisme dans les conceptualisations et l'on invite des communications faisant le point sur l'enrichissement possible des modèles et concepts géographiques en prenant en compte le phénomène touristique. Ceci pourrait être le lieu de confrontations avec les géographes qui ne sont pas spécialistes de tourisme. C’est pourquoi cet appel à communication s’adresse non seulement aux géographes « du tourisme », mais aussi aux représentants de la géographie culturelle, sociale, urbaine etc. dans les recherches desquels le tourisme fait irruption sans qu’ils sachent quoi en faire et/ou où le tourisme reste un phénomène étrange, invisible ou impensé. Nous invitons les personnes intéressées à envoyer les propositions de communications au plus tard le 2 mars 2009. Le comité scientifique rendra sa réponse avant le 1er avril 2009. Elles doivent être envoyées au secrétariat du colloque (christine.eden@iukb.ch) en une page comprenant l’exposé du sujet, le questionnement et d’une problématique. Le comité d’organisation est disponible pour répondre, le cas échéant, aux différentes questions. Références : Comité d’organisation : Unité d’Enseignement et de Recherche en Etudes touristiques, Institut Universitaire Kurt Bösch, Sion Comité scientifique : 10/02/2009 The Brunei Gallery - SOAS - University of London | 21st-22nd February 2009 Purchase your ticket here: www.soaspalsoc.org Ticket includes lunch and refreshments Registration and refreshments: 9.00am-9.30am Keynote: Walid Khalidi (Co-founder of the Institute of Palestine Studies)
From 1947 to 1897: From Partition to Basle
9.30am-10.30am Chair: John Chalcraft (London School of Economics) Karma Nabulsi (University of Oxford) Resistance History from Below and the Collective Retrieval of Memory: Towards a New Historiography Ilan Pappe (University of Exeter) The Struggle Over Memory: the Future Agenda Randa Farah (University of Western Ontario) Palestinian Refugees and their Oral Histories: History's silence, Memory's Burden Lunch: 12.30pm-1.30pm Session Two: The Challenge of Sources and the Persistence of Myth 1.30pm-3.00pm Chair: Ilan Pappe (University of Exeter) Saleh Abdel-Jawad (Birzeit University) The Credibility and Limits of Refugee Oral Testimonies Isabelle Humphries (University of Surrey) Reading from a Different Archive: Alternative History and Palestinian Internally Displaced of the Galilee Norman Finkelstein (independent researcher) The June 1967 War: What Bestsellers Proclaim, What Scholarship and the Documentary Record Show Refreshments: 3.00pm-3.15pm Session Three: Cultural Resistance 3.15pm-4.45pm Chair: Bashir Abu-Manneh (Barnard College, New York) Salwa Mikdadi (Curator and Publisher) Creative Uprising - Palestinian Artists Alternative Strategies of Resistance Suleiman Mansour (Artist) Artists in the Time of Revolution: Demands, Tensions, Contradictions Sinan Antoon (New York University) Darwish and the Poetics of Resistance Refreshments: 4.45pm-5.00pm Session Four: History of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement 5.00pm-6.45pm Chair: Gilbert Achcar (School of Oriental and African Studies) Bashir Abu Manneh (Barnard College, New York) Problems of Palestinian Liberation Fadle Naqib (University of Waterloo) The Economic Orientation of the Palestinian National Movement Roger Heacock (Birzeit University) Stones, Bullets, Ballots: Intifada, An Unfinished Drama in Several Acts Khaled Hroub (University of Cambridge) The Decline of Secular Nationalism and the Rise of Political Islam Day Two: Sunday 22nd February Session Five: Social and Economic History of Palestinian Resistance 10:45am-12:45pm Chair: Roger Heacock (Birzeit University) Musa Budeiri (Birzeit University) What Would a Class Analysis of Palestinian history Conclude about Possibilities of Palestinian Resistance? (tbc) Penny Johnson (Birzeit University) "The Big Ones Can Do Nothing": Reflections on the Histories of Women's Struggles for Family, Community and Nation in the Lens of the Palestinian present Ahmad Sa'di (Ben Gurion University) Resisting to Survive: The Palestinians in Israel During the First Two Decades Lori Allen (University of Cambridge) Fatah and Hamas: Corruption and Political Ethics in Palestine Lunch: 12.45pm-2.00pm Session Six: Forces of Counter-Resistance: The (Still) Unvanquished
Enemies of Palestine Chair: Fadle Naqib (University of Waterloo) Moshe Machover (Kings College, London) The long-term strategy of Zionist Colonisation Seumas Milne (The Guardian) The Role of Imperialism in the Palestine Tragedy Gilbert Achcar (School of Oriental and African Studies) Collusions and Illusions: Arab States and Palestinian Liberation Laleh Khalili (School of Oriental and African Studies) The Location of Palestine in Global Counterinsurgencies Refreshments: 4.00pm-4.15pm Session Seven - Roundtable discussion: The Meaning of Gaza: History Reconsidered in Times of Catastrophe 4:15pm-6:00pm Chair tbc Karma Nabulsi, Saleh Abdel-Jawad, Gilbert Achcar, Norman Finkelstein, Ilan Pappe Please note SEATS ARE LIMITED - book in advance Price: £25 (£15 concessions, and £40 organisations) All tickets include lunch and refreshments To buy your tickets: Online - www.soaspalsoc.org By cheque. Send cheque payable to SOAS Palestine Society with attached note of Location: SOAS Brunei Gallery | Thornhaugh Street | Russell Square | London, WC1H 0XG Contact: palestineconference@gmail.com | www.soaspalsoc.org 9/02/2009 Lisbon, Portugal, 2-5 September 2009. Following the recent escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the spontaneous interventions of colleagues and social scientists in the ESA discussion list, which caused the managers of the list to change the discussion list into a moderated discussion list, a number of us thought it might be more productive if there were a structure within ESA for a more professional (sociological), systematic and in-depth discussion of the factors that are responsible for the “chronicity” of this regional conflict as well of the possible strategies for resolving it. After consultation with the Lisbon Conference Programme Chair and the Local Organizing Committee, we decided that this can best be achieved at this time, through the constitution of a Research Stream. So we proposed the formation of a Research Stream on “Chronic Regional Conflicts” whose priority focus for the 9th ESA Lisbon Conference would be the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Concurrently, we sent a summary Call for Papers to the Conference Organizers, that was approved and has already been loaded on the ESA conference webpage, as Research Stream 14 (http://www.esa9thconference.com). As a Research Stream, we have the right to organize 8 sessions, two of which will be 2-hour sessions and 6 1.5-hour sessions. The convenors welcome contributions, especially by Israeli and Palestinian sociologists/social scientists, on (1) the factors behind the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict and (2) on strategies for a permanent and genuine resolution. Although the focus of RS 14 in the Lisbon conference is on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the convenors welcome comparative studies of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with other “chronic” regional conflicts – resolved or not and especially from young scholars- that would shed light on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and point to the road for a permanent and genuine resolution. We remind prospective contributors to RS 14 that they should submit the abstracts of their papers by February 26, 2009, using the official Online Abstract Submission Form and following the Instructions and Guidelines for Online Abstract Submissions published in the conference website (http://www.esa9thconference.com). Convenors: 1. Nicholas Petropoulos, Sociologist, former director of the “Emergencies Research Center”, Athens, Greece (erc@otenet.gr) 9/02/2009 Jeudi 19 février 2009 | Bruxelles (1050) Se déplacer d’un lieu à un autre pour le plaisir est un comportement qui, en Europe, se développe surtout à partir du siècle des Lumières. Plusieurs chercheurs, en France et en Angleterre, ont récemment montré l’intérêt d’étudier la pratique de la promenade dans une perspective historique en la replaçant dans le contexte du développement des loisirs, de l’essor de nouveaux modes de sociabilité, de la réalisation d’importants aménagements urbains ou de l’évolution du rapport à la nature. Le présent colloque a pour objectif d’explorer l’histoire de la pratique de la promenade en Belgique au tournant des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles en la comparant avec la situation dans d’autres pays européens (Angleterre, France, Italie). Mot clés : promenade, promeneur, Paris, Bruxelles, boulevards, remparts, Londres, Belgique, Bath, Spa, Prince de Ligne, cheval, jardin botanique, archéologie, siècle des Lumières Séminaire : Adieu l’automobile ? Entre faillite de l'automobile américaine et mode de vie écolo. Mardi 28 avril 2009 | Un débat d’actualité avec Gabriel Dupuy (auteur des Territoires de l'automobile) et Mathieu Flodeau (auteur des Cultures du volant XX°-XXI° siècles). Paris (75006) (Café de Flore (1e étage). 172, Boulevard St Germain. Métro Saint-Germain. ) Association Les Cafés géographiques 8/02/2009 A EuroMeSCo Paper is now available online. Paper 75, available only in French, studies the risks characterising the Western Mediterranean and how the instability in this area is managed, with its focus being the towns of Ceuta and Melilla on the Gibraltar Strait. To read more visit: http://www.euromedinfo.eu/site.169.news.en.5230.html 7/02/2009 Mobilities, Volume 4 Issue 1 2009 ublication Frequency: 3 issues per year Papers: Student Im/mobility in Birzeit, Palestine 11 – 35 Author: Christopher Harker Is Children's Independent Mobility Really Independent? A Study of Children's Mobility Combining Ethnography and GPS/Mobile Phone Technologies 37 – 58 Authors: Miguel Romero Mikkelsen; Pia Christensen 'Driven to Distraction?': Children's Experiences of Car Travel 59 – 76 Author: John Barker Challenging Minority World Privilege: Children's Outdoor Mobilities in Post-apartheid South Africa 77 – 101 Author: Matthew C. Benwell Moving Into and Through the Public World: Children's Perspectives on their Encounters with Adults 103 – 118 Author: Sue Milne Urban Beaches, Virtual Worlds and 'The End of Tourism' 119 – 138 Author: Tim Gale Flows of Meaning, Cultures of Movements - Urban Mobility as Meaningful Everyday Life Practice Reverse Diaspora and the Evolution of a Cultural Tradition: The Case of the New Zealand 'Overseas Experience' 159 – 175 Authors: Jude Wilson; David Fisher; Kevin Moore 6/02/2009 New Book: Stein, R. (2008) Itineraries in Conflict: Israelis, Palestinians and the Political Lives of Tourism Duke University Press New Book: - Sessions Rugh, S. (2008) Are We There Yet? The Golden Age of American Family Vacations University Press of Kansas - Not especiafically on the Med but of interest to those looking at family and vacations New Book: Chin, C. (2008) Cruising in the Global Economy: Profits, Pleasure and Work at Sea Aldershot: Ashgate 5/02/2009 THE MEDITERRANEAN RENAISSANCE PROGRAM (MRP)
"Contemporary challenges for the Mediterranean basin" 24 February 2009
MRP board track leaders provided initial rationales which are summarised as follows and these will constitute the basis for papers. 1. Climatic changes and impacts (Track leader: Annick Douguédroit, France) Current climate change which has a very high probability to continue beyond the end of that century, presents in the Mediterranean peculiar features rather more threatening than in many other areas in the world. In summer temperature is supposed to undergo one of the most important increase in the world when it is still high and rainfall is supposed to decrease while the area is not yet rainy. Such climate change features will cause impacts of great importance on human beings and many activities. For example, summer tourism will encounter difficulties when intermediate seasons favourable to tourism will grow longer. Generally all the water resources, even from the near mountains, will decrease when population will increase. Yields of rain culture like wheat will diminish, when irrigation will be limited by the water resources decrease. On the whole adaptation to climate change will be an urgent necessity in all the Mediterranean Basin. 2. Migration in the Mediterranean Region: between human development and security (Track leader: Ali Toumi, Tunisia) The Mediterranean has always been the seat of intense trade flows of goods and men. It becomes a very dynamic interface economically and culturally between the three continents that border it. The role played by one of the seas, without doubt, the most vibrant in the world, remains quite real and increasingly confirmed. This does not obviously lack poses many problems in the political, economic and human resources that each of the Mediterranean nations is called upon to manage as much as possible, i.e. safeguarding its own interests but without any damages for neighbors. Whatever the precautions taken by both sides, these policies are not without generating, now as in the past, many conflicts. Before combining the efforts of developing security requirements, these policies must also deal with social attitudes that are often unpredictable and difficult to control. Four principal themes can guide the reflection of geography in this folder: 3. Information Society (Track leaders: Aharon Kellerman, Israel, Maria Paradiso, Italy) The emergence of the information society has become a global trend. It implies a mass adoption of communication technologies, mainly mobile phones and the Internet. Mediterranean countries at large and peripheral regions in them in particular present an important arena for understanding of the role of traditional communications practices as potential obstacles or promoting agents for the adoption of information societies and their impacts. 4. Tourism and sustainability (Track leader: Giuliano Bellezza, Italy). The main stream of tourism movements in the Mediterranean Region still follows the original one way southbound direction. Today minor stream (northbound) has similar features: wealthy people on their vacation, looking for some days of happy life, divided between leisure and culture. We find major differences when considering the sustainability. The problem of environmental quality disruption is more or less the same, though the limitations are stronger in the European sector. Things are substantially different when looking to the human impact. In the European shores the danger doesn’t come from southern tourists. But there is a growing number of irregular immigrants, selling a lot of merchandise (sun glasses, blankets, beverages, and even gems and “ethnic” jewellery). Mixed among them, there undeniably are drug sellers and other no recommendable people. On the southern coast, the sight of the wealthy European tourists sometimes drive local people to the consciousness of their too much poorer conditions, while some behaviours normal on an European beach will be considered offensive in the non European ones. Therefore, problems of cultural relations and sustainability must also be considered. Program 17.00-18.00 MRP steering committee business meeting Accomodation: Special rates for the presenters and audience are agreed with Hotel Lancelot (Home page: www.lancelothotel.com E-mail: info@lancelothotel.com ) please mention MRP for discounted reservation. MRP Steering Committee Mahmoud Ashour, MRP Coordinator, Chair IGU Commission on Arid Lands Humankind and Environment, University Ain Shams, Cairo, Egypt (mmashour_99@yahoo.com); ? Ronald F. Abler, IGU President 5/02/2009 University of York, Department of History Cultural History. 9-11 July 2009 Spatial mobility has moved to the centre of lively debates in a number of key areas of social inquiry. Terms such as 'travel', 'mobility', 'displacement', 'diaspora', 'frontier', 'transience', 'dislocation', 'fluidity' and 'permeability' are central to thinking about the nature of subjectivity and hence the formation of identity on any number of geographical scales and social dimensions. In particular, some scholars argue that the contemporary meaning and practice of what it is to belong is changing as new technologies of transport, along with communications, help to reduce the power of traditional places to define personal and communal identities. Some commentators even suggest that unparalleled levels of mobility are shaping a 'post-societal' world of extreme individualization in which nation-states and civil societies are being replaced by global 'citizens' moving endlessly through worldwide 'networks and flows'. Critics argue that this assumption of unbounded movement and geographically fluid identities is unwarranted, and that what matters is understanding how inequalities of mobility arise and with what consequences for social equity and ecological sustainability. But without a sure grasp of the historical precedents to these scenarios, it is all too easy to misconstrue the significance of the changes that are taking place. This conference therefore aims to explore how, from the mediaeval period and earlier through to (post)modern times, what it means to be fully social has evolved in relation to spatial movement, whether of an everyday or an exceptional character. What role did mobility - and immobility - play in defining the meaning of participation in social, economic or political life and the spatial scale at which such participation took place? how were such meanings formed, sustained and dissolved by particular social structures, mechanisms or processes? and with what consequences for the lived practice of collective and individual life? The conference will address the complex and heterogeneous ways in which historical (im)mobilities were both produced and consumed in relation to human sociability in any sphere and at any geographical scale. It will explore how the modes of governance and organization, infrastructures, vehicles and other artefacts which together constituted transport or mobility systems as material cultures acted as intermediaries engaging, ordering and distributing the spaces, conceptions and practices of communal participation from micro to macro levels. Understood in this way, the highway, for instance, implicated in the making of mobility networks from mediaeval times to the computer age, emerges as a key notion. It has played an important role in conceptions of a civic sphere of free movement and speech since mediaeval law enshrined the right of passage along certain designated routes. Important for the movement of political correspondents in the 18th century and the formation of a nascent working-class politics in the 19th, a space of contestation between automobilists and those seeking to maintain it as a locale for the conduct of neighbourhood life in the 20th, the highway (as the 'information superhighway') is frequently invoked as a triumph of western liberal-capitalist democracy in the 21st. The conference will include papers from any perspective in relation to the historical connections between human sociability and mobility, including: * different kinds; from the transport of people to the mobility of goods, merchandise and ideas, from enforced movements to the discretionary consumption of mobility * different periods; from mediaeval or earlier to the contemporary * different scales; from large transport regimes to individual mobilities, from neighbourhood to global flows * different actors; from mechanical technologies to human- and animal-powered mobilities * different spaces; from developed to developing countries and transnational zones. The Keynote Address - 'Home Lands: How Women's Movements Made the West' The conference will open on the Thursday evening with a keynote address by Virginia Scharff, Professor of History and Director, Center for the Southwest, University of New Mexico. Currently Beinecke Senior Research Fellow, Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders, Yale University, Professor Scharff is author or editor of five academic books, including Twenty Thousand Roads: Women, Movement, and the West (University of California Press, 2003) and Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age (Free Press, 1991). She also works as a consultant with museums and documentary film makers, as well publishing best-selling mystery novels under the pseudonym Virginia Swift. Virginia Scharff's keynote address is based on her work over the past five years with the Autry National Center in Los Angeles on a museum exhibition and book titled Home Lands: How Women Made the West. The exhibition looks at three places in the American West, examining the ways in which women used a particular resource to claim that place as 'home' over hundreds, and in one case, thousands of years. One of those places is the region articulated around the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains, ultimately including the city of Denver, Colorado, and the resource examined is transportation. The project looks at the relation between women's history and the horse, the railroad and the motorcar, to discuss changes in cultural landscapes and social patterns. In each case, the mode of transportation shaped (and was shaped by) locals' and transients' notions about who belonged to the place, who had authority to determine what happened there, who had the right to claim the place as 'home' and on what terms. The Department of History at the University of York enjoys a high reputation for its Cultural History Conferences with their emphasis on allowing ample time for presentations and discussion coupled with a lively social programme. This conference is organized in conjunction with the Institute of Railway Studies & Transport History, the Department's partnership since 1995 with the National Railway Museum. The Museum, one of the UK's leading tourist attractions, will be the main location for the conference, including an evening social event in one of the spectacular exhibition halls. Please note that all participants will be expected to register for the conference. Registration fees are expected to be around £125, including all lunches and evening events, with a limited number of bursaries for students and others without institutional support. We intend to publish a selection of the papers as a edited book or as a special issue of a peer-reviewed journal. Further details will be posted at www.york.ac.uk/inst/irs/ <http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/irs/> . 4/02/2009 University of Manchester - 4th to 6th July 2009 The 2009 BRISMES Annual Conference is to be hosted by the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures at the University of Manchester from Friday 3rd to Sunday 5th July 2009. The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Frontiers: Space, Separation and Contact in the Middle East’. Given that the ‘spatial turn’ in the humanities and social sciences has not yet figured prominently at BRISMES Annual Conferences, the organisers think it timely that our attention shift to a more detailed debate of the question of ‘space’. Political and territorial frontiers in the Middle East have been a source of conflict and violence for millennia and continue to be so with acute topicality. However, while undoubtedly functioning as separators, borders have also always been zones of contact and exchange. Furthermore, the 2009 theme endeavours to embrace a notion of ‘frontier’ that goes far beyond mere geo-political implications by inviting thought and reflection on ‘frontiers’ at a whole host of levels, be they cultural, ideological or economic and as they relate to the study of art, philosophy, literature, religion and science etc. The organisers encourage proposals which explore any aspect of the above in any given historical period from pre-history to the present day. The conference theme has been chosen with the aim of stimulating debate and providing a particular focus; however, it is not meant to be exclusive. Hence, as always with BRISMES Annual Conferences, the 2009 4/02/2009 Postgraduate students (Masters/MPhil/PhD) are invited to submit abstracts for papers (no more than 250 words) and a personal profile (no more than 100 words). They should be sent, with full contact details, by 4pm on 26th January 2009 to: fmconference2009@googlemail.com 4/02/2009 Thessaloniki, Greece, July 2009. Conference website: http://www.seerc.org/dsc2009 A detailed call for papers can be found under Research Track Three “Governance, Politics and Society” on the left hand side. The deadline for submission of the abstract is Sunday 15th February 2009. Submission format and deadlines are listed in the call for papers downloadable. 3/02/2009 1/02/2009
Series: Landscape Series , Vol. 5 This book seeks to contribute to theoretical advances, analytical approaches and applied studies in the broader inter-disciplinary field of contemporary landscape transformation research. http://www.springer.com/life+sci/book/978-1-4020-4095-5 New book: migrating to America: Transnational Social Networks and regional Identity among Turkish Migrants. Dicarlo, L. 2008 (IB Tauris, London) |
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