Creativity and the City, 1600–2000 – Call For Papers

Creativity and the City, 1600–2000
University of Amsterdam
27–29 October, 2016

Organized by Amsterdam Centre for Cultural Heritage and Identity, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Keynote Speakers

  • Jo Guldi, Brown University
  • Ilja Van Damme, Antwerp University
  • Scott Weingart, Carnegie Mellon University

This international and interdisciplinary conference on the history of creativity and the city aims to bring together recent research in the fields of history, arts, and digital humanities. In the last decade, scholars in the humanities and social sciences have explored the complex interplay between places and their culture using a variety of methods and approaches. The conference examines the relationship between cultural artefacts (art, books, etc.) and the urban networks and spaces in which they were conceived, (re)produced, distributed, mediated, and consumed in early modern and modern Europe. How such issues can be studied by means of existing and novel (digital) methods, as well as comparative and long-term approaches, is the second major theme of the conference.

We invite researchers in the fields of history, arts and culture, urban studies, media studies and the digital humanities to submit abstracts. Papers may address all kinds of cultural expressions and products—from books, (applied) arts and theatre, to films, media and music. The committee particularly invites scholars who will reflect on methodological questions and the use of computational techniques for historical research.

The list of possible themes includes but is not limited to:

  • Space and place (built environment, local amenities, spatial distribution, transnational connections, etc.)
  • Entrepreneurs and firms (business strategies, networks, collaboration and competition etc.)
  • Intermediaries and institutions (guilds, societies, museums, policy, etc.)
  • Markets and labour markets (distribution, training, cross-sectoral linkages, etc.)
  • Text analytics for historical corpora (information retrieval, pattern recognition, tagging and annotation, etc.)
  • Digital cultural heritage (3D/4D modelling, visual and audio-visual content analysis, etc.)
  • Analysis and visualization (prosopography, network analysis, discourse analysis, etc.)

Please submit your details, abstract (300 words max.) and 5 key words before 15 November, 2015 through the conference management system. When your paper is embedded in a larger research project, please also provide its title and affiliation. A scientific committee will evaluate the abstracts and sessions will be formed on the basis of the selected papers. For inquiries, please contact us at achi.red@uva.nl.

Abstract submission: 15 November, 2015
Notification of abstract acceptance: Early January, 2016
Registration will open in February 2016.