This interdisciplinary conference will put an emphasis on urban spaces and their representations in literature, film, and media. Proposals should address the role of the urban in literary, social, and cultural discourses in the 20th and 21st century. The conference will focus on theories of the urban, wants to explore the role of the city as site for transnational, cosmopolitan as well as local processes of identity formation and their intersections, intends to reflect the urban as a mirror of aesthetic, cultural and social innovations and aims at discussing the city in the context of urban planning, tourism, and commodity culture. Our regional focus will be on the Americas, but comparative perspectives on other regions are also welcome.
As a unifying theme, we propose the issue of “urban complexity”: How are the complex interdependencies of identity, urban space, migration, demographic change and urban growth (or shrinkage, as the case may be) represented? How do representations of the urban highlight the global connections between individuals and groups in cities around the world? Which strategies of representing multiplicity, simultaneity, chaos and complexity are media-specific, which transcend media? In order to guarantee for a coherent conference and a focused volume of proceedings, which the organizers plan to publish in book form, all papers should in one way or another address the representation of “urban complexity”.
The conference wants to support and present the work of young scholars in particular and invites doctoral students to submit proposals.
The conference languages will be English and Spanish. The organizers plan to publish the conference proceedings in book form.
