Dear List Members,
We are accepting proposals for the following session we will be holding at the Tenth International Society for the Study of European Ideas Conference (ISSEI) to be held in Malta, July 24-July 29, 2006.
As our engagement with the topic will extend to projects and publications that go beyond the extent of this conference, we also welcome abstracts from members who cannot attend the conference, but are interested in contributing to this area of research. However, we very much hope that you will be able to attend the conference as well!
From Metrosexual to Metropolitan Hubris: Political, Cultural and Historical Perspectives on Anti-Urbanism
The tradition of blaming cities for rabid moral decay, degeneracy and the dearth of religion is centuries old. Whether it is Babylon, Berlin, Paris or New York City, cities have all been cast as epicenters of secular life, immorality, materialism, and corrosive social atomism. Yet, history has also witnessed a plethora of countervailing notions of the cities, in which the city not only enjoyed iconic status but was squarely identified with modernity, cultural experimentation, sexual liberation and progressive politics. This type of thinking reached a historical peak with Marx and Engels’ privileging of town over country and in thinkers like Walter Benjamin, Georg Simmel and Ferdinand Tönnies. Although the city has retained some of this cultural luster in the third millennium, dwindling urban populations and political constellations and cultural trends have significantly diminished cities’ power and magnetism. In an era of suburban sprawl, home theaters, the hit-serial “Desperate Housewives” and mushrooming “red-states,” the divide between the city and the suburban and rural has intensified. What has been the effect of this spatial reorganization of modern life? What are the implications― cultural, political, and aesthetic— of the growing power of the anti-urban discourse? Is there a way of speaking about anti-urbanism that is not contingent upon the “left-right” or “red-blue” divide? This panel is interested in papers that address these questions and questions that address anti-urbanism as a historical, cultural, political, philosophical and economic question and the way that space is intimately tied to such themes.
Other possible approaches to the topic include but are not limited to:
Gender vs. sexuality
Progressivism vs. traditionalism
Health vs. degeneracy
Cosmopolitanism vs. provincialism
Public space vs. private ownership
Social solidarity vs. atomism
Society vs. Community
Secularism vs. Religion
Cultural and aesthetic life vs. religious life
Public culture vs. private culture
Interested parties should send a 100-200 word abstract by January 15, 2006 to both
Elena Mancini, Rutgers University elemancini@aol.com
and Michael J. Thompson William Paterson University thompsonmi@wpunj.edu