Call for Paper: Beyond Temporal and Spatial Borders

·No. 999·

“Beyond Temporal and Spatial Borders”

American Urban History from a Transnational Perspective

(The 3rd Forum on American Urban History)

According to the United Nations data, the total population of the urban areas in the world with 500,000 or more population is estimated at 2.25 billion, 51.4 percent of the world urban population in 2020. In terms of city-size, almost all the world's big cities a hundred years ago were European and American cities, while a hundred years later, most of the mega cities with a population of more than 10 million are in developing countries. The similar tendency has been happening in urban history study since 2000. More and more history scholars from developing countries have joined the study of urban history, devoting themselves to the fields of urbanization, urban governance, reform, housing, segregation, public health, racism, planning, multi-culture and social justice, etcetera.

The variables of cities development and the diversity of urban history studies itself promote the "transnational comparison and global turn" of urban history studies, and the historical exploration of American cities is no exception. Although American scholars are still important contributors to the research of American urban history, the number of scholars studying American urban history in other countries has increased gradually, whose perspective as "others" riches vocabularies for the studies of American urban history. Chinese scholars have never been absent from the field of American urban history. More than that, Chinese scholars play an important role to introduce newest methodologies and approaches to Chinese world.

The outbreak of “COVID-19” epidemic has reminded us once again the disadvantages of blind pursuing of speed in the urban development. It also makes more and more people find the differentiation in the process of world integration-"de nationalization" in the process of globalization on one hand, and "vernacular turn" of cities on the other. The performance of cities around the world in dealing with international economic crisis, political crisis, epidemic and terrorism is remarkable and worthy of study from a global and transnational perspective. Many scholars have begun de facto to rethink the study of American urban history from the perspective of transatlantic and trans-Pacific. Therefore, we plan to organize a forum “Beyond Temporal and Spatial Borders: American Urban History from a Transnational Perspective” to discuss issues related to American cities in the past 100 years or even earlier. There will be 4 panels and 2 round-table discussions:

Panels

1. "All Solid Things are Gone":

Urbanization, Suburbanization and Urban Space

2. "Better City, Better Life": 

Urban Governance, Reform, Planning and Urban Politics

3. "Tomorrow's Garden City":

 Public Health, Healthy City and Urban Ecology

4. "Stadt Luft macht frei": 

Ethnic Group, Justice, Resilient City and Urban Culture

Roundtable

1. Youth Scholars:

How to study American Urban History today?

2. Female Scholars: 

Gender in the Cities and the Study of Urban History

Call for paper and Register for the 2021 Virtual Conference! We invite you to register for the 2021 Forum’s Virtual Conference on American Urban History, where you can mingle and make meaningful connections with Chinese historians and scholars from across the globe, and reconnect with friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. If permission, we will translate your academic papers to let more people in the Chinese world know your academic views. Please register for the forum via email (send your profile to [e-mail]) before May 10, 2021. The papers should be submitted to and send to  before June 30.

Date: 14-15, August 2021 

         (we will send you the schedule)

Join us online via our Virtual Conference

Contact us:

Prof. Yang Changyun, 

cell phone number: [phone]

Miss Xu Xinrui, 

cell phone number: [phone]

Or send E-mail to [e-mail]

American History Research Association of China;

Department of History, Shanghai University;

The Center for American Studies, Shanghai University;

The Center for American Studies, Xiamen University;

The Center for Ecological History, Renmin University of China

Welcome！