From Space to Place: the Spatial Dimension in History of Western Europe

From Space to Place: the Spatial Dimension in History of Western Europe

Organizer
Centre for Research in History and Theory Roehampton University
Venue
German Historical Institute, 17 Bloomsbury Square, London WC1A 2NJ.
Location
London
Country
United Kingdom
From - Until
16.04.2010 - 17.04.2010
Deadline
15.02.2010
Website
By
Prof. Cornelie Usborne

This international and interdisciplinary conference challenge 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.

Programm

Friday, 16 April
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

3. Leif Jerram (Urban History, Manchester), ‘Space: A Useless Category of Historical Analysis?’

Conference Dinner

Saturday, 17 April
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, Leicester), ‘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

Contact (announcement)

Dr Charlotte Behr
School of Arts
Roehampton University
Roehampton Lane
London SW15 5PH
C.Behr@roehampton.ac.uk


Editors Information
Published on
04.02.2010
Classification
Temporal Classification
Regional Classification
Subject - Topic
Additional Informations
Country Event
Language(s) of event
English
Language of announcement