[URBANTH-L] CFP: Landscape, Environment and Human Agency in the City Since 1700

[Angela Jancius]

Submission Deadline: 	2004-12-17

LANDSCAPE, ENVIRONMENT AND HUMAN AGENCY IN THE CITY SINCE 1700

Distinct historical, literary, artistic, philosophical and spiritual
traditions have developed in the UK dedicated to ‘the mental landscape’.
This concerns the human interpretation of the environment, its
representation in landscape, symbolism, and its exploration in the
creative and performing arts. There is also an emerging body of research
concerned with the history of the material environment itself, from air
and water to gas and electricity.

Research on landscape and the urban environment are long established in
urban history, historical geography, and archaeology, and interest is
presently expanding across the full range of the arts and social
sciences. Archival materials and artefacts are unique in their quality
and scale, and a developing interest in environmental history is
bringing innovative perspectives to the study of urban and landscape
history.

Focussed around the themes of ‘landscape, environment and human agency
in towns and cities since 1700’ the conference organisers invite papers
that offer new perspectives, approaches, sources or methods. The papers
might address one or more of the following questions.

     * What is the history of urban landscape and how might it be 		 
   rewritten?
     * What is the history of the material infrastructure of urban life
       and of the technologies that have made the modern urban landscape?
     * How have changes in the urban environment interacted with changes
       in sensory perception (aural, visual, etc.)?
     * How might we understand the relationship between urban place and
       human identity over time?
     * How has the ‘nature’ been transformed and incorporated in urban
       settings, and how might the old ‘nature’/’culture’ divide be
       rethought in the light of this?
     * What do we know historically of people’s lived relationship to
       their environment and the particular attachments that are forged
       between people and place?
     * How has the urban landscape been imagined as utopia and dystopia
       and what might this tells about specific desires and fears?

Paper proposals should be a single A4 page and sent to either Bob Morris
or Simon Gunn by 17 DECEMBER 2004 at the following addresses:

Professor R J Morris
School of History and Classics,
University of Edinburgh
50 George Square
Edinburgh EH8 9JY
E-mail: rjmorris at ed.ac.uk

Dr Simon Gunn
Cultural Studies
Faculty of Arts and Society
Leeds Metropolitan University
Leeds LS1 3HE
E-mail: s.gunn at leedsmet.ac.uk

	
<http://www.le.ac.uk/urbanhist/>