The transformations in Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe since 1989 have brought about a new interest in the region’s various borders ranging from those of new states to the re-emerging cultural and religious boundaries of the region. Especially the tenancy of old imperial borders (Ottoman, Habsburg, Russian) that seem to exist until today, albeit in an invisible, ghost-like form, highlights the importance of thinking beyond the imperial/post-imperial divide and calls for historical comparisons of the different trajectories of societies from empire to nation states.
This panel likes to focus on the historical role of cities in this line
of research looking at how borders impacted on cities in their imperial and post-imperial phase of existence and how these two phases can be brought together in a comparative framework. The nature of such borders could be various: external in the form of national borders impacting on cities or internal referring to cultural or social divisions in urban society. Taking urban history beyond the imperial/post-imperial divide offers the opportunity for numerous comparisons shedding light on the longue durée of urban transformation particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
We’d like to invite papers that engage with:
- The divisions in urban societies and the expression in their spatial
structures beyond the imperial/post- imperial divide.
- The nature and transformation of borders cities after changes of
sovereignty.
- The transposition into the social geographies of cities of changes of sovereignty in neighbouring regions.
- The impact of post-imperial situations on the governance of diversity and on communal balances
- The existence of Ghost-neighbourhoods after traumatic exchanges of population or episodes of ethnic cleansing, and the evolution of such neighbourhoods.
- The persistence of invisible spatial frontiers in cities, at various
scales: neighbourhood, street, house or family and effects of resilience and cancellation.
- The dimension of memory of such ghost frontiers.
For paper proposals please visit the EAUH website at
http://www.eauh2012.com/sessions/call-for-paper-proposals/