[Kaupunkitutkimus] Call for papers: Literary Second Cities, Åbo Akademi / Turku (FIN), 20-21.8.2015

[ameel at mappi.helsinki.fi]

Call for Papers

Literary Second Cities

The Second International Conference of the Helsinki Literature and the  
City Network (HLCN)

Åbo Akademi University (Turku, Finland), 20-21 August 2015

The conference ‘Literary Second Cities’ invites papers on new  
approaches to the study of literary cities, smaller cities, and cities  
or portions of cities judged secondary or subordinate in any  
historical period or part of the world. See link below for the full  
conference abstract. The deadline for the call for papers is 15 March  
2015. The language of the conference is English. Please send proposals  
(length approximately 300 words) to secondcities at abo.fi .

The keynote speakers are Professor Marc Brosseau, University of  
Ottawa, and Professor Bart Keunen, University of Ghent. Professor  
Brosseau has written extensively on literary geographies. He is the  
author of Des romans-géographes (Paris, 1996). His most recent  
publications in English include the entry on ‘Literature’ in the  
International Encyclopedia of Human Geography (2009) and work on the  
literary geographies of Toronto, as well as on the operation of  
spatial traps in the fiction of Charles Bukowski. Professor Keunen is  
an internationally-renowned expert on literary urban studies and the  
head of the Ghent Urban Studies Team. Among his latest publications  
are journal articles and book chapters on landscape, narration and  
contemporary urban design in various settings, and the monograph Time  
and Narration: Chronotopes in Western Narrative Culture (Northwestern  
University Press, 2011).

Papers on subjects including, but not limited to, the following themes  
are welcome:

      Literature defining the second city and which cities are to be  
understood as secondary
      The literature of provincial cities and those which are distant  
from other urban centres or from today's globalised megacities
      The literature of cities and city districts that can be  
understood as shadow partners to major cities: the Left Bank of Paris;  
South London; Oakland to San Francisco; Salford to Manchester.
      Scaling the city: comparisons between larger and smaller cities
      Scaling the city: shifts between small-scale, localised views  
and overall perspectives
      Scaling the city: topographic and synoptic views of cities in  
the light of work by Michel de Certeau, Andreas Huyssen and other  
theorists
      Second cities in pre-modern literature
      Second cities in African, Asian and Latin-American literatures
      Literature defining the second city and which cities are to be  
understood as secondary
      Regional urban literatures
      Modes of definition of non-metropolitan or non-primary cities,  
for example Chicago or Birmingham as working city; Liverpool or  
Glasgow as primary port of the British Empire
      Former capitals and declined or marginalized cities
      Mobilities (spatial, identity-related) and secondary cities
      Specialized cities (their function deriving from e.g. tourism, a  
harbour or airport, religion)

Particular sessions on urban literature and scale, Nordic second  
cities and modernism and literary second cities have already been  
proposed, and further sessions will be organized on the basis of the  
final applications.

During the conference, a round table discussion will be held to  
discuss the development of the network and the possibilities for  
further cooperation between international scholars in the field of  
urban literary studies. A peer-reviewed publication on the basis of  
selected conference papers is planned.

For more information contact:

Jason Finch, Åbo Akademi University (jfinch at abo.fi)
Lieven Ameel, University of Helsinki (lieven.ameel at helsinki.fi)
Markku Salmela, University of Tampere (markku.salmela at uta.fi)

Conference website:

http://www.abo.fi/fakultet/hlcn2

Full conference abstract:

http://www.abo.fi/fakultet/confabstract

HLCN website:

http://blogs.helsinki.fi/hlc-n


-----
Dr. Lieven Ameel
Postdoctoral researcher
Department of Finnish, Finno-Ugrian and Scandinavian Studies
P. O. Box 3, 00014 University of Helsinki
lieven.ameel at helsinki.fi
http://blogs.helsinki.fi/urbannarratives/
- Thoughts on City Literature & Urban Studies -
http://tuhat.halvi.helsinki.fi/portal/fi/person/ameel
- List of publications -
follow me on twitter: @lievenameel



-----
Dr. Lieven Ameel
Postdoctoral researcher
Department of Finnish, Finno-Ugrian and Scandinavian Studies
P. O. Box 3, 00014 University of Helsinki
lieven.ameel at helsinki.fi
http://blogs.helsinki.fi/urbannarratives/
- Thoughts on City Literature & Urban Studies -
http://tuhat.halvi.helsinki.fi/portal/fi/person/ameel
- List of publications -
follow me on twitter: @lievenameel