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CALL FOR PAPERS for a collaborative workshop: Global Infrastructures: The Production of the Modern World
21 April 2023 @ 12:00 am - 9 May 2023 @ 12:00 am CEST
In the last twenty years, in correspondence with the growing importance assumed by Global History, numerous studies have analysed past border-crossings and long-established transnational networks. A collaborative workshop organized by the Institute of Contemporary History at Nova University, Lisbon, and the University of Bologna, Italy, intends to contribute to the discipline by promoting a collective investigation of the origins and development of global infrastructures, emphasizing how their construction interacted with colonial projects, capitalist ventures, and cultural superstructures.
The workshop will focus on questions such as:
- What global infrastructures have contributed to the construction of the modern world and the establishment of a single world market?
- Which public and private actors have participated to the construction and securing of global infrastructures?
- What ecologies of labour have been mobilized during the erection of global infrastructures?
- What forms of resistance and sabotage have opposed and slowed down the development of planetary infrastructures?
- What has been the impact of climate change and the ecological crisis on global infrastructures?
- How can the concept of infrastructure contribute to expand Marxist theories beyond the traditional distinction of economic structure and cultural superstructure?
- How can historical approaches help us rethink the relation between global infrastructures and imperialism?
We welcome papers dealing with all these aspects from an interdisciplinary perspective. Interested scholars are invited to send a long abstract between 400 and 700 words and a short bio to policante@fcsh.unl.pt and/or to mattia.frapporti2@unibo.it by the 9th of May.
Successful applicants will be communicated by the 12th of May and invited to the final workshop that will take place on the 9th of June 2023 at the University of Bologna in the Department of Arts.