Hispanic Urban Studies book series launched [Palgrave Macmillan]

Hispanic Urban Studies

[Click here for *.pdf announcement: Hispanic Urban Studies]

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Edited by

Benjamin Fraser, East Carolina University, USA

Susan Larson, University of Kentucky, USA

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Hispanic Urban Studies is a series of scholarly monographs, edited volumes, and translations focusing on Spanish, Latin American and US Latino urban culture.

The humanities and the social sciences are closer in methodology than ever before. Hispanic Urban Studies serves a dual purpose: to introduce radically original humanities work to social science researchers while affirming the relevance of cultural production to discussions of the urban. This book series takes advantage of and further contributes to exciting interdisciplinary discussions between Hispanic Studies and Cultural Geography with the aim of bringing in new ideas about space, place, and culture from all parts of the Hispanic world. Monograph titles bring together analyses of the cultural production of the Hispanic world with urban and spatial theory from a range of disciplinary contexts. The series also welcomes proposals for edited volumes related to cities that contribute in creative ways to our understanding of the spatial turn in Hispanic Studies. Translations published in the series introduce English-language readers to the rich legacy of materials on urbanism, urban culture, and cultural geography originally published in Spanish.

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Advisory Board

Malcolm Compitello, University of Arizona, USA; Monica Degen, Brunel University, London, UK; Cecilia Enjuto Rangel, University of Oregon, USA; Amanda Holmes, McGill University, Canada; Marcy Schwartz, Rutgers University, USA; Álvaro Sevilla Buitrago, Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain; Armando Silva, National University of Colombia, Bogotá; Michael Ugarte, University of Missouri, Columbia, USA; Víctor Valle, California Polytechnic State University, USA.

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If you would like to submit a proposal for the Hispanic Urban Studies Series please feel free to contact:

Farideh Koohi-Kamali

Palgrave Macmillan

Farideh.Koohi@palgrave-usa.com

 

Call for Papers: ELN Special Issue, “Imaginary Cartographies.”

ELN 52.1 Spring/Summer 2014

“Imaginary Cartographies”

Call for Papers:  ELN Special Issue, “Imaginary Cartographies.”

In recent decades the map has emerged as a key site of cultural and imaginative reworking, and yet the history of such symbolic mediations between humans and their spatial environment is also ancient and complex. Volume 52.1 of ELN (Spring/Summer 2014) will investigate “Imaginary Cartographies” across centuries and cultural contexts to explore a range of these symbolic mediations. The term intends to include those methods of mapping literary space that generate both imaginative and culturally revealing understandings of recognizable and/or created worlds and their modes of habitation. “Imaginary Cartographies” refers to actual as well as purely conceptual forms of mapping, and includes spaces of considerable variability: from the mapping of cosmic, global, or local space, to charting the spaces of the body or the page. Geographers have argued that the social history of maps, unlike that of literature, art, or music, has few genuinely popular, or subversive modes of expression because maps pre-eminently are a language of power, not of protest; in this view, the map remains a site of territorial knowledge and state power, authority and jurisdiction, social codes and spatial disciplines—one intent upon eliding its tactile and material conditions of production. “Imaginary Cartographies” welcomes approaches to mapping that complicate this account by considering subaltern or alternative cartographies—cartographies that elude, interrupt, or disperse forms of power, or serve not-yet-imagined spectrums of interests.

Winner of the Phoenix Award for Editorial Achievement from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals in 2008, the biannual journal ELN (English Language Notes) has been devoted exclusively to

CFP/conference and book pub – The Right to the City in an Era of Austerity (1973-2014)

The Right to the City in an Era of Austerity (1973-2014): Perspectives on the Past, Present, and Future of Urban Democracy in the United States and Great Britain

An International Conference Organized by the Research Center Monde Anglophone: Politiques et Sociétés (HDEA/Université Paris-Sorbonne) and the Research Group Politiques Américaines (CREA/Université Paris-Ouest Nanterre La Défense)
Paris, France
May 30-31, 2014

If Henri Lefebvre’s idea of “the right to the city” has become fashionable in recent years, this is because it seems to describe something elemental about the current political context in Europe and North America. Indeed, the body of work Lefebvre completed from the late 1960s to the mid 1970s has seen a revival, in part, because it predicted so well the circumstances that now shape the global urban landscape. Writing amidst the social and political upheaval of the late 1960s, Lefebvre fixed his gaze on a dimension of the contestation that many other observers were overlooking—the grassroots campaigns against the destruction of old Paris neighborhoods by modernization projects like the Left Bank Expressway and the Tour Montparnasse. For Lefebvre, these struggles over the use of urban space were critical because, as he also predicted in his classic book The Urban Revolution, urbanization itself was becoming one of the driving forces of capitalism. In view of the importance that the process of gentrification has taken on in Europe and North America since the 1970s and 1980s, it is hard to argue that history has not proven him right. By the 1990s, the phenomenon that British sociologist Ruth Glass had first observed in London in 1964 had become a central strategy of cities throughout the world. As David Harvey argued in 2008, such circumstances have revealed the extent to which “the right to the city” has come to mean “the right to command the whole urban process.”

This conference seeks to build upon the insights of Lefebvre, Harvey, Don Mitchell and others by exploring

Journal CFP: ‘Saving the City’: Collective Low-Budget Organising and Urban Practice

Call for papers for an ephemera special issue on:

 ‘Saving the City’: Collective Low-Budget Organising and Urban Practice

Issue Editors: Paula Bialski, Heike Derwanz, Lena Olaison, Birke Otto, Hans Vollmer

In times of financial and economic crisis, cities have become sites of austerity measures, permanent fiscal restraint, declining tax revenues, bankruptcies and ever increasing cuts to public services. In order to ‘save the city’, Jamie Peck argues that the imperative to ‘cut back and save’ and ‘work your way out of debt’ results in urban policies such as structural adjustment, privatization, public-private partnerships, and welfare retrenchments (Peck, 2012). While existing institutional arrangements, collectivist, social-state based ideals and redistributive systems are diminishing, there has been a proliferation of collectively organized urban practices.

In light of these developments, urban dwellers are working creatively with urban scarcity to develop new forms of organizing the city parallel and/or in contrast to centralized, state-based infrastructure, and are forced to do so with a low budget. These include collectively organized urban survival strategies such as car sharing as opposed to car ownership, traveling using online hospitality networks (e.g. CouchSurfing) instead of hotel accommodation (Bialski, 2012; Rosen et. al., 2011), second-hand shopping, cloth swapping and ‘dumpster diving’ versus mass consumption and throwaway culture (Gregson and Crewe, 2003), or, DIY-building rather than ready-made (Brodersen, 2003; Drotschmann, 2010). Other examples include urban farming and cooperative gardening (Schmelzkopf, 1995), local currency systems (Hughes, 2005), transport ticket sharing, house squatting (Neuwirth, 2005), up-cycling of sewage and trash, and other forms of re-using and re-valuing urban resources. As the city is made up of multiple forms of organizing, forming an alternative, low-budget solution often means moving away from the more centralized and top-down forms of urban organization into the decentralized and local.

These self-organized, collective saving practices all involve “complex encounters, connections and mixtures of diverse hybrid networks of humans and animals, objects and information, commodities and waste“ (Sheller and Urry, 2006: 2). Here cultures of frugality and sharing (Botsman and Rogers, 2010) emerge, creating new

Call for reviews – “Lo urbano” (Critical Reviews on Latin American Research)

Please find the entire call in Spanish and English at http://www.crolar.org/index.php/crolar/announcement

Call for reviews, Volume N° 4: CROLAR – Critical Reviews on Latin American Research

We cordially invite you to contribute a book review for “Lo Urbano”, Volume 4 of CROLAR – Critical Reviews on Latin American Research , which will appear in October 2013. CROLAR IV calls for reviews on recent publications on “the urban” and urban phenomena in and from Latin America.

As place of anonymous cohabitation and social diversity (Simmel, 1903), as a sphere of capitalist reproduction and collective consumption (Castells, 1974), via the imaginarios urbanos (García Canclini, 1996), to the “Rebel Cities” (Harvey, 2012), the city has evoked systematic analysis of the tight linkages between public space and collective culture, the effects of capital accumulation, and social discontent. Moving beyond a broad range of questions which have been (or can be) studied in urban environments by the social, cultural as well as natural sciences, CROLAR IV calls for reviews on the particularity of “the urban” itself. Which phenomena constitute “the urban” as a field of study and how are urban areas studied differently from (or even in a dialectical relation to) rural areas?

Many urban theories have claimed to have universal applicability independent of the location they were built from, or where they are applied. Our more specific interest lies in publications which reflect on such dichotomization – either by compiling and comparing research results from diverse locations, or by discussing limits to travelling concepts (Said). It is well known that Latin America is not only the most urbanized continent and the one with the highest inequality in incomes, but that it also offers a long interdisciplinary tradition of urban studies. We therefore also call for reviews which mirror the rich contribution of Latin American urban research to a general understanding of issues such as violence, migration, citizenship, protest, ecology, spatial segregation, or the financial crisis, amongst others. With respect to “the urban”, what can and has been learned from Latin America?

The editorial team is eagerly awaiting your reviews – which may be written in Spanish, Portuguese, English or German – no later than July 15th, 2013. If you are considering writing a review, please take notice of our formal guidelines (http://www.crolar.org/index.php/crolar/about/submissions#authorGuidelines).

If you are interested in contributing, please directly contact the editors of this volume: Anke Schwarz (anke.schwarz[at]ufz.de) and Frank Müller (frank.mueller[at]fu-berlin.de).

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Dipl.-Ing. Anke Schwarz
Department Urban and Environmental Sociology

Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research GmbH – UFZ
Permoserstraße 15 / 04318 Leipzig / Germany
Phone +49 341 235-1726
Fax +49 341 235-1836
anke.schwarz@ufz.de
http://www.ufz.de/index.php?de=4519

CFP-edited book on Marxism and Urban Culture

CFP-edited book on Marxism and Urban Culture

Submissions are invited for an edited book on Marxism and Urban Culture that has received initial interest from an international publisher known for their strength in Marxian-themed series and titles.

While all abstracts using a Marxian framework to approach culture in urban contexts are welcome, it is anticipated that submissions will conform to one of two subtypes reflecting the division of the book into

CFP–new Journal of Urban Cultural Studies launched

Visit the new Journal of Urban Cultural Studies site here.

Call for Papers

The Journal of Urban Cultural Studies is a new peer-reviewed publication cutting across both the humanities and the social sciences in order to better understand the culture(s) of cities. The journal is open to studies that deal with culture, urban spaces and forms of urbanized consciousness the world over.

Although we embrace a broad definition of urban cultural studies, we are particularly interested in submissions that give equal weight to: a) one or more aspects of urban studies (everyday life, built environment, architecture, city planning, identity formation, transportation…) and b) analysis of one or more specific forms of cultural/textual production (literature, film, graphic novels, music, art, graffiti, videogames, online or virtual space…) in relation to a given urban space or spaces.

Essays of 7,000-10,000 words (including works cited and notes) should be sent by attachment to the Editor at urbanculturalstudies@gmail.com. JUCS is also open to proposals of special issues by guest editors working individually or in teams of two. All citations in other languages should be translated into English for the journal’s international reading public, in addition to including the original text.

While the journal does not publish book reviews, we do publish review essays—which should discuss 3-5 recent books on a shared topic or theme (or place) and run from 2,500 to 4,000 words. Review essays of urban-themed installations or other works of art are also welcome. These essays will be reviewed in house. Given our visual focus, we are interested in original, unpublished artwork on the topic of cities and in publishing articles accompanied by images where appropriate.

We encourage a variety of approaches to the urban phenomenon—the strengths of the editorial board run from urban geography to literature and film, photography and videogames, gender and sexuality, creative economy, popular music, Marxist approaches, fashion, urban planning, anthropology, sociology, Deaf culture, built environment, philosophy, architecture, detective fiction and noir, and more…

CFP-Boundaries International Architectural Magazine – ‘Re-Cycle Architecture’

Reblogged from h-net, see original post here.

Boundaries introduces a call for papers on the following subject: «Re-Cycle Architecture».Boundaries is a quarterly international magazine on contemporary architecture, with texts in English and Italian. The first issue, July – September 2011, is centred on the Contemporary Architecture in Africa, the second, October – December 2011, on the Architectures for Emergencies, the third, January – March 2012, on the Architectures of Peace and the fourth, April – June, on The Other City.The aim of the project in Boundaries is to offer a panoramic and critical view of the architectures that today face, in many different ways, the challenges of modernity, and of sustainability intended as a balance between problems of cultural, environmental, economic and social nature. The fifth issue of Boundaries International Architectural Magazine will focus on : « Re-Cycle Architectures ». Architectural reuse, rehabilitation, reconversion exist from long time ago but they are at the centre of heritage and architectural study issues only since recently. Nowadays, recycle and sustainability are ever more at the centre of architectural and urban planning researches and practices. The disproportionate loss of land has severely undermined our environment, it becomes necessary to reflect on how design could lead to the improvement of the existing architectures, rather than building new ones. Recycle has to be intended here not as a new vague for aesthetic or marketing trends, but as re-use, “life cycle extension” for materials and objects. This new cycle affect the materiality of the existing, its functions and its significations, thus creating an hybrid entity adapted to contemporary needs. How does the role of cultural tourism, globalization, politics and economic issues influence the treatment of a building such as recycling? After the rejection of postmodernism and the increase of new contemporary forms of architecture, how does an architectural gesture could enhance the existing fabric without a mimetic approach? From sustainable construction techniques and building strategies, to sustainable recycling of demolition waste, to sustainable preservation and restoration, Boundaries wishes to offer in the fifth issue an insight in all the best practices and researches. All kinds of approaches to this topic are welcomed, but must be focused on the XXIst Century. Papers can be case studies oriented, or methodological and/or theoretical in focus. The deadline for submission is July 18, 2012. Contributors are invited to submit a title, an abstract (from 400 to 500 words, and three images), and a short biography stating their affiliation and professional interests (maximum 100 words). Official language for paper presentation is English. The style, grammar and phrasing should be edited by a person with an excellent command of English and a good understanding of architectural terminology. All submission of abstracts should be sent by email to redazione@boundaries.it (up to 15 Mb) before July 18, 2012. The papers will be selected by the editorial board and subjected to evaluation with the blind peer review system. The authors will receive an answer before July 24, 2012. Articles should be sent to the editorial board, in their definitive form and with illustrations (free from reproduction rights), before August 12, 2012. Articles length should be between 400 and 700 words, notes and bibliography included. Contributions must be original and should not have been previously published, even in part. All articles must be illustrated (at least ten images, drawings, sketches, renders or other).

Boundaries http://www.boundaries.it redazione@boundaries.it Fax: (0039)069085149 Email: redazione@boundaries.it Visit the website at http://www.boundaries.it

CFP-The Journal of Urbanism (special issue: DIY Urbanism)

[reblogged from h-net; click herefor original posting]A new attitude toward public space is emerging in cities across the globe. Though certainly not a new phenomenon, citizens are increasingly using urban space to advance political and social justice goals through protest, occupation, unsanctioned modification, and other means. Of particular relevance to planners, urban designers and local policymakers are the actions called, variously, do-it-yourself (DIY), tactical or guerilla urbanism. DIY activities engage the increasingly blurry distinctions between design and activism through which individual actors have become increasingly empowered to create and implement low cost interventions in public space aimed at solving fine-grained urban dilemmas. Though often illegal or at best unsanctioned, DIY interventions are increasingly lauded within certain activist segments of the planning, design and social justice communities as pragmatic and fiscally prudent approaches to addressing unmet needs of urban residents in the face of municipal fiscal crises, increasing privatization of public space and other recent trends. DIY efforts offer

CFP – Transitions: Journal of Franco-Iberian Studies

[reposted from h-net]CFP – The Spanish Urban Space in the 20th and 21st Centuries Transitions: Journal of Franco-Iberian Studies seeks papers for a special number Navigating through the Spanish Urban Space in the 20th and 21st Centuries, to be devoted to the representation of the Spanish Urban Space in the 20th and 21st centuries. This volume will function as a mirror of our last issue constituted on the Parisian Banlieue. Papers should address perceptions, representations, or negotiations of the city in Spain through literature, film and/or art. Papers might address topics such as social production and interpretation of the urban space, how the city shapes-and in turn is shaped by—artistic creation, the mediation of the Spanish city in notions of subjectivity, identity, alterity, and/or regionalisms. This special issue will appear in December 2012. The deadline for submissions is September 15th, 2012. Transitions accepts original articles written in English, French or Spanish. The essays should not exceed 6500 words. Authors of accepted articles will be asked to subscribe to the journal. All submissions go through a blind peer-review process. Please submit papers formatted in MLA style along with a 200 word abstract and a separate cover sheet containing the author’s name, article title, affiliation and contact information (submissions@transitionsjournal.org). Please include the subject heading: “Special issue Fall 2012.” For more information or questions please contact us at: (transitions@transitionsjournal.org).

Transitions: Journal of Franco-Iberian Studies Email: transitions@transitionsjournal.org Visit the website at http://www.transitionsjournal.org