The Doctoral Adam Galos Circle for the History of the 19th and the 20th Centuries invites PhD students and early career scholars to participate in the international conference titled City and the Process of Transition – from Early Modern Times to the Present to be held at the Historical Institute of the University of Wroclaw, June 8th – 10th 2017. The intention of the organizers is to challenge questions concerning the behavior of the city dwellers who faced the lack of stability, resulted primarily from the progressive urbanization and globalization since the early modern era.
We propose to focus on the following issues:
1) Authority and Citizens
We encourage to consider relations between state power and municipal self-government, as well as the attitudes of both of these authorities towards city dwellers. The proposals may address the impact of the policy applied by different levels of officials in terms of: hygiene, health, safety, justice, culture (education, art, fashion), customs (beliefs, mentality, values) or interpersonal relations (clientelism, rivalry, conflicts of interest). Lastly, the question of political and social emancipation of different groups of inhabitants will be equally important.
2) Multicultural Relations
A city was (and still is) an area of a constant inflow of people from outside. One may recall the history of Jewish settlement or the 19th and the 20th century migrations. Hence, the cultural diversity in the urban space was present in different spheres: public, private, intimate. Therefore, the key topics and themes of this part of the conference will include attitudes towards migrants and the coexistence of different ethnic, religious and cultural groups (their adaptation, assimilation, integration).
3) Between Ideal and Reality
People have always created a vision of “ideal city”: Atlantis, Heavenly Jerusalem, Campanella’s City of the Sun, Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh, Niemayer’s Brasilia until today’s Jing-Jin-Ji. We would like to confront the idea of the ideal city and real transformations of the urban space, but also to elucidate the consequences of the city’s ‘expansion’ into suburban areas together with the influence of urbanization and economic changes on daily life.
The aforementioned perspectives suggest the main directions of discussion, although other proposals dealing with the main theme of the conference are also invited.
International Conference "City and the Process of Transition – from Early Modern Times to the Present" 