[URBANTH-L]CFP: Urban Culture (6/20/08; MAPACA, 10/30-11/1/08)

[Angela Jancius]

CFP: Urban Culture (6/20/08; MAPACA, 10/30-11/1/08)

Urban Culture Area, Mid-Atlantic Popular Culture/American Culture 
Association, Niagara Falls, ON, Canada, October 30th-November 1st, 2008.

Small neighborhood cafes and stores are closing down, giving way to new 
condo buildings and chain stores; favorite parks dwindle in size, giving way 
to various markets and corporate businesses.Pedestrians smile to the tunes 
coming from their i-pods but not to each other.What is becoming of our 
cities? What is becoming of us, the residents of these cities? This year, 
the Urban Culture area of MAPACA aims to understand the production, 
negotiation, and loss of public space in the metropolitan city, in light of 
current conditions, such as the proliferation of technology, the effects of 
natural disaster, gentrification, and globalization. Presentations about 
unique, ordinary, temporary, and permanent public places are welcome as are 
presentations about the formation, sustenance, and disappearance of public 
self, itself a function of public place, in the context of the city. We seek 
historical or ethnographic studies of public sites, poetic accounts of 
personal geographies through cities, and explorations of highly orchestrated 
or surprisingly improvised public events in the city. If interested in 
participating in a workshop on "writing the urban," in addition to 
presenting a paper, please, indicate so. Please, send your 1-page paper 
abstracts and 1-paragraph recent bios as virus-free, Word attachments to 
Blagovesta Momchedjikova, bmm202 at nyu.edu, by June 20th, 2007. This year, the 
Mid-Atlantic Popular Culture/American Culture Association meets in Niagara 
Falls, ON, Canada, Oct. 30th to Nov. 1st, 2008. Check also: www.mapaca.net.

Blagovesta Momchedjikova, PhD
New York University
Expository Writing Program
411 Lafayette, 4th Floor
New York, NY 10003
bmm202 at nyu.edu