Recent research has pointed towards the ship as a contested political space in its own right. This research explores the ways in which community among sailors (as well as among other people living on and by the sea) enabled new forms of agency involving issues of race, class, gender, cultural identity and performance.

The interdisciplinary conference on 'Community and the Sea in the Age of Sail' will explore the part played by community in the history of ships, port cities, oceangoing and empire. What part did community play in the complex world of the seas and their ships, and what did it mean to be a 'part' – or not – of these communities as such?

The conference seeks to bring together different perspectives on the histories of the sea and the many different communities of people traversing the sea or otherwise dealing with the ocean.

We wish to confront issues like: How did questions of community shape struggles for agency among both seafaring and port-resident groups, and to what extent were these struggles themselves about commonality? What was the political arithmetic of authority and resistance in the age of sail? How was it performed and what was its rhetoric?

We welcome proposals from scholars - as well as post graduate students - in many different fields. Topics might include (but are not restricted to):
- Antagonism, struggle and power in the shaping of oceangoing communities
- Rhetoric of class, race or gender in the communities of travel and mobility
- Historical agency within oceangoing communities
- Relations and boundaries between communities ‘of the sea’ and their ‘landed’ counterparts
- Port cities and the shaping of oceangoing communities
- Enabling new histories of the seas and their communities – a challenge to history-writing?

Keynote speakers include Professor Marcus Rediker, University of Pittsburgh, USA and Professor Clare Anderson, University of Leicester, UK

The conference is held under the auspices of CEPS - Cultural Encounters of Premodern Societies and CGS - Institute of Cultural and Global Studies, Aalborg University, Denmark.

Please email an abstract of your paper (maximum 300 words) to the organizers for consideration before 20 December 2011.

For more information on this conference please email the organizers:
Research Student, Johan Heinsen, Aalborg University (heinsen@cgs.aau.dk)
Associate Professor, Torben Kjersgaard Nielsen, Aalborg University (tkn@cgs.aau.dk)