From Space to Place: the Spatial Dimension in History of Western Europe 16 and 17 April 2010

Centre for Research in History and Theory

German Historical Institute, 17 Bloomsbury Square, London WC1A 2NJ.

A two-day international and interdisciplinary conference, organised by the Centre for Research in History and Theory, Roehampton University

This conference will explore the so-called ‘spatial turn in history’ discussed among historians for the last decade or so and inspired by earlier anthropological ideas and the interdisciplinary approach by sociologists, especially geographers. It challenges the idea of place or space in history as an unreflected essentialist category linked to tradition and immutability. Instead, space as place is shown to be socially and culturally constructed, mediated and contested. Organised into three separate but interlinking topics (social space, workplace and intimate space) papers will investigate how specific spaces in the past not only evoked but conveyed political, social, cultural and symbolic meaning and conversely how particular spaces/places influenced this meaning.

The conference is interdisciplinary; historians and geographers with an interest in politics, society, culture and gender as well as anthropologists, archaeologists, and literary scholars will explore the meaning of space in the past by situating it in its precise historical

context. There will be broader reflections on historiography and theory as well as case studies from a wide chronological span (from the medieval, early modern to the modern period) but geographically restricted to Western Europe.

Friday

10.00am   Registration

10.30am   Welcome by Andreas Gestrich, Director, German Historical Institute, and Cornelie Usborne, Roehampton University

10.45am – 1pm General reflections

1. Beat Kümin (History, Warwick), ‘The “spatial turn” from a historical perspective’

2.   Linda McDowell (Human Geography, St John’s College, Oxford), ‘Space and place in geographical theory: from spatial differentiation to social relations’

3.   Eliza Darling, (Anthropology, Goldsmith College, London), ‘The spatial turn that wasn’t: class, anthropology, and the triumph of place over space’

1 – 2pm Lunch at the GHI

2 – 5pm Social Space

1. Matthew Johnson (Archaeology, Southampton), ‘Late Medieval Spaces, Early Modern Practices’
2. Gerd Schwerhoff (History, Technical University Dresden), ‘Public places in early modern towns’.

3. – 3.30 Tea break

1. Leif Jerram (Urban History, Manchester), ‘Space: A Useless Category of Historical Analysis?’ (with case studies from turn of the 20^th-century Munich)

Conference Dinner

Saturday

10 – 10.30am coffee

10.30 – 12.45pm Workplace

1. Jeremy Goldberg (History, York), ‘“I have mor to doo then I doo may”: Problematising Labour, Space and Gender in later medieval England’

2.  Amanda Flather (History, Essex), ‘Space, place and gender: the sexual and spatial division of labour in the early modern household’

3. Steven King (History, Oxford Brookes), ‘Work places and places of work: Labour market architecture and issues of space in Europe 1750-1870’

12.45-1.45pm Lunch at the GHI

1.45- 4pm  Intimate Places

1.  Felicity Riddy (English, York), ‘Space, intimacy and values in the late medieval English “bourgeois” home’

2. Sandra Cavallo (History, Royal Holloway), ‘Spaces for body-care and body services in the early modern Italian home’

3. Willem de Blėcourt (Historical Anthropology, Huizinga Institute, Amsterdam), ‘Over the Threshold: liminality, proximity & intimacy in twentieth-century witchcraft discourse’ 

4-4.30pm Tea

4.30 – 5.30pm Roundtable

Organising committee:  Prof. Cornelie Usborne, Prof. John Tosh, Dr Charlotte Behr, Dr Sara Pennell, Dr John Seed, Dr. Sabine Wieber, Prof. Trevor Dean.

Participation Fee: £ 80 (including lunch and refreshments on both days)

£ 40 Students/Associate Tutors

For more information and registration see:

http://www.roehampton.ac.uk/researchcentres/chat/conferences/index.html

Controversy, protest, ridicule and laughter

The University of Reading Early Modern Studies Conference 9-11 July 2010

Call for Papers

This three-day conference at the University of Reading aims to draw together scholars from a variety of disciplines working on areas related to the themes of controversy, protest, ridicule, and laughter in the early modern period.

Controversy, protest, ridicule and laughter are means to register more than disagreement: they convey contemptuous opposition to an opponent. How can the study of their uses advance our understanding of the nature and development of public debate in the early modern period?

How were new media (theatres, newsbooks, periodicals) and traditional forms (sermons, proclamations, disputations) used by the two (or more) sides in early modern controversies? What were the connections between ‘low’ literary forms (pamphlets, ballads, satires, libels), and the learned seriocomic tradition of, for example, Erasmus’s Praise of Folly?
What were the sites of protest: Parliament; stage; university; alehouse; Inns of Court – and what connections, if any, existed between these spaces?

What role did ridicule have in religious and political controversy, from Martin Marprelate to John Milton’s anti-prelatical writings? How were the conventions for mocking one’s opponent refracted by variables of class and gender?

Laughter might be a marker of intellectual achievement (distinguishing the human from the animal), or it might be condemned as a sign of brutality. If laugher was both elevating and debasing, what strategies were used by writers of satire, comedy and polemic to control its connotations? How can we write a history of laughter? How useful is more recent psychological and philosophical work on laughter – by Freud or Henri Bergson, for example – for work on early modern culture?

Possible topics include:

Humanism, learning, wit, and laughter; gender and class; classical ideas of laughter and ridicule; disputation and debate in education; ridicule, stereotyping and national identity; European models of controversy and ridicule; popular radicalism and the public sphere; conduct manuals and the etiquettes of laughter; the Putney Debates; clowns and jesters; new media and popular radicalism; the Spanish Match; burlesque, parody, scatology and obscenity; Jonson’s comedy of humours and satirical comedy; popular print (pamphlets, ballads) and ‘low’ literary forms; urban and rural forms of controversy; Rabelais and discourses of the body; legal controversy: sedition, libel, slander; the Marprelate Tracts; jokes and jests on the stage and page; Milton’s Defensio pro populo Anglicano; the Oath of Allegiance controversy; mimicry and impersonation; Civil War religious radicalism; the carnivalesque; Jacobitism; traditions of complaint, satire and invective; the decorum of ridicule, controversy, and ideas of ethical restraint; the ‘Glorious Revolution’ and ‘godly revolution’.

We invite papers that consider any or all of this year’s themes. Proposals (max. 300 words) for 30 minute papers and a brief CV should be sent via email attachment by 4 December 2009 to: Dr. Chloë Houston, School of English and American Literature, University of Reading, c.houston@reading.ac.uk

Rumours, Prostitutes, Historians: Researching and Writing Cultural History – A Workshop with Luise White

Thursday 25th June 2009 Archives Teaching Room
School of History
9 Abercromby Square
Liverpool

Programme:

11:00 “How I went from prostitutes to vampires to the politics of white rule and why I’m still slightly baffled by it”

12:30 Lunch

13:30 Oral history, oral historiography, and the study of rumour and gossip.

This is a free event; for the catering it would be helpful if you could let us know if you plan to attend. Also, it would be useful if, in preparation for the workshop you could read: Chapter 2 ‘Historicising rumor and gossip’ from Luise White, Speaking with Vampires and/or: Luise White, ‘The traffic in heads: bodies, borders and the articulation of regional histories’, Journal of Southern African Studies 23.2 (1997), 325-38

Great put downs of our time – ‘Chick-hist’ fights back

Lisa Hilton on David Starkey in the Sunday Times:

‘I’ve just written a book about English queens, but this one is beneath my notice.’

Ouch!

AHRC studentships at the School of History, University of Liverpool

Thanks to the award of an AHRC Block Grant to the University, the School of History has one research masters and two PhD studentships available for candidates registering for courses starting in the academic year 09-10.

More details here.

Are British Historians the Best in the World?

Asked Juliet Gardiner in the Sunday Times yesterday. I couldn’t help feeling like channeling the spirit of Al Murray, the Pub Landlord here, ‘Yeah, mate, British historians, best in the world. Glass of wine/fruit-based drink for the lady?’

In the article, Andrew Roberts called (I assume tongue-in-cheek) for a regulatory authority to protect ‘proper historians’ from the incursions of ‘amateurs’. Forgive me if I am wrong, but isn’t Roberts an ‘amateur’ in the sense that he did not receive formal training as a professional historian? Sure, he’s got a first-class BA in history, but so have a lot of people (Al Murray for instance). Does that mean Al Murray is a proper historian?

Patrick Wright’s website

Is over here. There’s a sort-of-blog, a comprehensive archive of his writings (including a timely re-issue of this piece on the early 90s property crash), and transcripts of ‘conversations’ with the cultural-archaeologist about his work.

Oxford Centre for Early Modern Studies

A bright, shiny, nearly-new portal for the above here.

Phillip Guedalla on the Glorious Revolution

“In the Great Rebellion the King left by the front door; in the Glorious Revolution he emerged from the tradesmen’s entrance”

From Supers and Supermen (1920).