Call for Papers: Identities and the Cities: Urban Transformations, Transition and Change in Urban Image Construction. Lucca, 23-25 November 2017
6th Euroacademia Forum of Critical Studies: Asking Big Questions Again
Urban image construction is a reflection, expression and constitutive factor of local identity formation and dynamics. Cities simultaneously localize identities and connect them with wider global signs of utility, function and symbolic order. Elasticity of the label identity accommodates everything that surrounds us as presence or absence, persistence or change. As a theatrical scenery, cities change after each act, sometimes with discrete adaptations, sometimes with radical interventions. If the scenery is composed of streets, parks, roads, museums, monuments, shopping malls and buildings connected through the intricate network of the perpetual and cumulative actions of its inhabitants, every adaptation and intervention affects its multi-dimensional identities. Changes in urban visual identities unfold as a form of public art feeding from the immense potential of social imaginary significations accommodated by a time’s perception of stability, structure and continuity. Urban change is itself a production of meaning, interpretation and identity making practices.
As the research on cultural identities of the city is becoming more abundant, this panel aims at adopting a wide-lens inter-disciplinary approach, while focusing on various processes affecting identities in the urban context in its global-regional-national-local interplay.
You can access the full Call for Papers here.
Please apply on-line using the electronic form on the conference website or submit by e-mail a titled abstracts of less than 300 words together with the details of your affiliation until 15 September 2017 to application@euroacademia.org
Please see complete information about the conference and details for applicants on the conference website.