Committee: Sara Abram (Fondazione Centro Conservazione e Restauro “La Venaria Reale”), Swati Chattopadhyay (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA), Ermanno Malaspina (Università di Torino, DISH Centro interdipartimentale di DH), Ines Tolic (Università di Bologna), Cristina Martelli (Università degli Studi di Firenze UNIFI), Cristina Trinchero (Università di Torino, DISH (Centro interdipartimentale di DH), Maurizio Vivarelli (Università di Torino, DISH (Centro interdipartimentale di DH).
Reporting: Swati Chattopadhyay (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA).
Which crisis are we really talking about? Any crisis affects population groups differentially. We therefore cannot discuss the adapatability of cities without specifically addressing relations of race, class, gender and sexuality. If we are committed to thinking about marginalized groups who have had scant representation in urban history, we need a methodological shift. This would require addressing the challenges of incorporating/adopting narrative voices of the marginalized, and a new scale of analysis for investigating crisis. The latter might mean abandoning the big scale of urban analysis in favor of the small scale of time and space.
Which narratives do we include in the investigation of urban adaptability and what kind of impact that might have on our understanding of urban processes, archives, and methods? How do we incorporate parameters and criteria from a postcolonial, critical race theory and gender/sexuality perspective?
This macrosession aims to critically survey urban history narratives and their impact. The goal is to reconsider the parameters and criteria of evidence and analytic method from new perspectives, The macrosession also calls for reflections on the adaptation of research approaches and methodologies to changes required by new theoretical, social, and technological developments.
Presentations may use the case study approach or delve into methodological questions.
More specifically the macrosession will include (but it will be limited to):
New research methods that address intersectional concerns of class, racism, gender and sexual inequities.
For long urban historians have attempted to introduce voices of the marginalized through techniques of micro history and feminist theory, but with limited success. This session asks presenters to rethink the units of urban analysis as a way of unlocking the potential of narrative voices that disrupt the grammar of authority. For example, how would our concerns with urban form, process and experience change if we attended to small units of time and space rather than the long arc of urban history and totality of urbanism that use tools such as the masterplan and planning policies formulated by dominant groups and end up ignoring or eliding the experience of the marginalized? Presenters are invited to consider small-scale durational and spatial parameters—short-lived sensations, episodic events, and interstitial and found spaces—that might enable other points of view to emerge in terms of what constitutes adaptability in a city.
Methodology on new knowledge requirements.
Methodology on new knowledge requirements.
This topic will focus on multidisciplinary research approaches and research products as output of novel cultural goals. It also will consider traditional individual research methodology versus new modes of collaborative research.
How knowledge structures adapt to new research and technological developments.
Data, metadata, data sources, digital humanities. The topic calls for contributions that consider heterogeneous sources related to the city as a complex informative ecosystem; on the evolution of criteria and systems for selecting, organizing and communicating data including big data. The contributions are especially expected to use various digital tools and methodologies for representing and/or spatialising the research framework.
Collections and museum narratives.
Museums’ narratives adaptiveness and relationships with collections and urban history. The theme deals with the different degrees of flexibility / transformation of museum collections and their spaces in relation to the social and cultural physiognomy of the cities. In particular, urban museums’ collections (civic museums, city history museums) are mirror and memory of the life of cities. How do the birth and evolution of these museums reflect the social, political and cultural history of cities? Guided by institutions and communities, they take on a variable physiognomy over time, both in terms of their assets and in terms of their language and choices of representation. Their resilience, or on the contrary their resistance to change, becomes a context for analysing the dynamics of urban history.
More topics
Interested persons applying can add more topics and interpretations
