[Bilimsel Haber] CFP: 10th International Conference on urban History, Ghent 1st-4th September 2010

[onurinal at onurinal.com]

10th International Conference on urban History, Ghent 1st-4th September 2010

Main session "Migrant Communities and Urban Space in the Mediterranean  
ports, 17th-19th centuries"

Recent research on migrant communities has witnessed a clear shift  
towards a more sophisticated understanding of the variety of bonds  
that link minority groups to the society they live in, as well as to  
their places of origins. Yet, when it comes to the understanding of  
past migrations, historical discourse still depends in many ways on  
traditional categories of analysis, that often poorly reflect the  
profound originality of the situations under study. This session is an  
attempt to challenge traditional and "ready-to-go" views on the  
organization of community life among migrants who lived in the  
Mediterranean port-cities during the late modern period (17th to 19th  
centuries). To this effect, the session will address the key issue of  
"minority spaces", namely of urban spaces that were socially,  
architecturally or culturally formed and shaped by the presence of  
migrants and foreigners. It will also consider the way such spaces  
were perceived by the local population, as well as the role played by  
urban space as a stake within broader patterns of social coexistence  
or exclusion.

Following the idea that routes of commerce were also the major routes  
of emigration, the session will focus primarily on Mediterranean  
port-cities, but will also consider cities located on other types of  
commercial crossroads. Conceived as minorities, foreigners' groups may  
include the so-called Diaspora groups such as the Jews, the Greeks,  
and the Armenians, but also the other "nations".

Favoring principally papers with a comparative approach, the session  
aims to approach the theme of "migrant spaces" from the point of view  
of both the community studies and the urban studies. Comparison can in  
turn be approached both on a theoretical level and through different  
case studies.

Session Organizers
Dr. Heleni Porfyriou (Senior Researcher, CNR-Italian National Research  
Council- ICVBC, Rome, Italy) helpor1 at yahoo.it , h.porfyriou at icvbc.cnr.it

Dr. Athanasios Gekas (Lecturer, Manchester University, UK)
a.gekas at manchester.ac.uk Mathieu Grenet (PhD Candidate, European  
University Institute, Florence, Italy) mathieu.grenet at eui.eu

Deadline
Paper proposals have to be submitted on the conference website  
(www.eauh2010.ugent.be/registration) between 1 October and 1 December  
2009. Session organizers have to decide which papers they accept, and  
they should inform the speakers and the organizing committee about  
their decision (deadline: 1 February 2010). In April 2010 the final  
program will be available on the website.