[URBANTH-L]Second CFP: What is a City? (Calgary, Alberta, Canada)

[Angela Jancius]

Second Call for Papers (proposals will be accepted until July 15th)

What is a City?

Western Humanities
25th Annual Conference
October 19-21, 2006

Calgary Institute for the Humanities
University of Calgary
Calgary, Alberta, Canada


For over 5000 years, cities have been a primary forum for meaning-making and 
place-making.  They have been studied in artifacts, literature, and history, 
expressed in texts,  visual and performing arts, and they have been analyzed 
in their social and physical settings.  Cities have inspired imagination, 
signified aspirations, and they have demonstrated human limitations.

The world is rapidly moving to a new context characterized by profound 
influences of cities.  Indeed, for the first time in history, over half of 
the world lives in urban centers.   No country is preventing urban migration 
and it is likely that populations will continue to grow in scale and 
complexity.

The Urban Age - a cooperative initiative by the London School of Economics 
dealing with the future of cities - notes that after decades of neglect, 
cities in the 21st century are at the center of economic growth, and are 
focal points of social, political and cultural innovation.  The city is now 
viewed as an agglomeration of opportunities, a promising milieu, and as a 
resource rather than a liability.

To know and understand cities - built or imagined - is to know and 
understand ourselves.

Proposals are invited for the 25th Annual Conference of the Western 
Humanities Alliance on the theme: "What Is A City?"

In the spirit of the Western Humanities Alliance mandate to foster 
disciplinary
and interdisciplinary scholarship - researchers from diverse fields of study
are invited to present papers addressing the question "what is a city?"

Submissions are welcome from the arts and humanities, from architecture
and urban design, from sociology, anthropology and geography -
from all disciplinary or interdisciplinary settings able to engage the 
question.


Proposal submissions should be sent by June 15**, 2006 to:

WHA Conference Committee
Calgary Institute for the Humanities
University of Calgary
Calgary, Alberta
T2N 1N4, Canada
cih at ucalgary.ca

** Proposals submitted during June 15 - July 15 will be considered for the 
program.

Additional information on the conference is available on the Calgary 
Institute for the Humanities web-site:  www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/Others/CIH

Proposals should be submitted electronically, be no more than 500 words in 
length, and also include a short biography of each author or participant.

Proposals for individual papers or for complete sessions are encouraged. 
Selected papers from the conference will be published in a special journal 
issue of the Western Humanities Review.

For information on the Western Humanities Alliance: http://wha.ucdavis.edu

The Western Humanities Alliance maintains limited funds for graduate 
students from member institutions to assist with travel expenses for 
presenters at the conference.  Eligible graduate student participants who 
wish to apply for travel funding should indicate their intent to do so in 
the proposal.

             The institutional members of the Western Humanities Alliance 
are:

Arizona State University - University of California, Riverside - Claremont 
Graduate University - University of California, San Diego - Reed College - 
University of California, Santa Barbara - Stanford University - University 
of California, Santa Cruz - University of Arizona - University of Colorado, 
Boulder - University of Nevada, Las Vegas - University of California, 
Berkeley - University of Oregon - University of California, Davis - 
University of Southern California - University of California, Irvine - 
University of Utah - University of California, Los Angeles - University of 
Washington - Utah State University - University of British Columbia - 
University of Calgary - Simon Fraser University