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This conference aims to go beyond area studies and to cross the usual national , geographical, and cultural boundary lines of scholarship by examining the role of oceans and sea basins as highways of exchanges between world areas as well as social and cultural sites in their own right. National historiographies are challenged by seascapes that wash the shores of multiple global areas and that create littoral social relations with dynamics of their own.
CALL FOR PAPERS
Seascapes, Littoral Cultures and Trans-Oceanic Exchanges
Conference at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC
Thursday February 13 to Saturday February 15, 2003
Organized by the American Historical Association, the World History Association, the Middle East Studies Association, the African Studies Association, the Latin American Studies Association, the Conference on Latin American History, the Association for Asian Studies, the Institute of European Studies at Columbia University, the Harriman Institute of Russian Studies at Columbia University, the Community College Humanities Association, and the Library of Congress, this conference aims to go beyond area studies and to cross the usual national , geographical, and cultural boundary lines of scholarship by examining the role of oceans and sea basins as highways of exchanges between world areas as well as social and cultural sites in their own right. National historiographies are challenged by seascapes that wash the shores of multiple global areas and that create littoral social relations with dynamics of their own. Studying the historiography of trans-oceanic exchanges promises to break new ground in the study of human linkages along several lines.
Each of the three conference days will focus on a particular rubric:
Day 1: Social and political organization.
Day 2: Economic implications.
Day 3: Cultural, environmental, and scientific issues.
More specifically, but not exclusively, papers might consider some of the following themes and their possible combinations:
Social and political organization: Littoral societies versus national authority over seas; the relationship of ports to one another as well as to their hinterlands; informal maritime communities and demographic flows; the gender division of labor in trans-oceanic exchanges; the emergence of a politically conscious Black Diaspora.
Economic implications: Evolution of regulation of trade, currency, and migration, as well as the transgression of such regulations; capital, resource and technology flows; origins of “globalization” in trans-imperial networking of colonizers and colonized beyond traditional nationally based metropole-colony relations.
Cultural, environmental, and scientific issues: Seaside sites of hybridization: ports, beaches, tourism; religions as sponsors of trade; hybridization of rituals; effects of climate and weather patterns on trans-oceanic exchange; ecology; biological exchanges.
Please consult www.theaha.org/conference/seascapes for application information. Deadline: April 30, 2002.
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