"Framing the City": CRESC Annual Conference. 2011. September 6th- 9th

Framing the City

CRESC Annual Conference. 2011. September 6^th- 9^th

Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester.

The CRESC annual conference 2011 takes the rubric of 'framing' to scrutinise the processes by which cities are conceptualised, realised, lived, ordered and depicted, disrupted, changed and contested. More than half of humanity now lives in urban areas and city processes affect the whole globe. The rates of growth, decay and transformation; the diversity, complexity and flows of population and activities, as well as the scale of problems and possibilities posed by city life are breathtaking. This conference seeks to bring together contemporary approaches to the descriptive and analytical challenges of thinking through processes of change in urban and city contexts. The conference takes the following themes as inspiration for a call for papers with confirmed plenary speakers as shown:

CITY MATERIALITIES
(city objects, plans, designs, discourse, built environments, assemblages, archaeology, urban morphology, infrastructure, post-industrial regeneration, economies, mega events, spatiality …)
Plenary speakers: Professor Nikos Salingaros (University of Texas at San Antonio) and Dr Albena Yaneva (University of Manchester)

CITY AFFECT
(the experiential, the senses, the auditory, passions, hopes, fears, violence, the imaginary, creative writing and literature …)

Plenary speakers: Iain Sinclair and Professor Alistair Bonnett (University of Newcastle)

CITY ENVIRONMENTS
(sustainability, living and working environments, ecologies, city geographies, nature/culture, eco-cities …)

Plenary speakers: Professor Maria Kaika (University of Manchester) and Professor Alan Simpson (Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow)

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL INEQUALITIES IN THE CITY
(social and cultural capital, governance, territorial dimensions of participation, contested spaces of belonging, social movements, underground resistance, critical urbanism …)
Plenary speakers: Professor Rosenlund Lennart (University of Stavanger, Norway) and Professor Talja Blokland (Humboldt University, Berlin)

MEDIATING THE CITY
(creative practices, cultural industries, urban identity, art, street art, broadcasting, music, advertising, dance, film, print and visual representation …)
Plenary Speaker: Nick Couldry (Goldsmiths College, University of London)

CITY MIGRATION, TRANS-NATIONALITY AND BORDERS
(mobility, flows, boundaries, identities, difference and belonging, states, nations, settlements and borders …)
Plenary Speakers: Dr Sabine Hess (Institute for European Ethnology) and Dr. Jan Rath (University of Amsterdam)

Please submit either a) proposal for individual papers, or (b) panel proposal including 3 papers by the end of April 2011 using the proposal forms online. Abstracts should not be more than 250 words.

The proposal forms should be sent to CRESC Conference Administration, 178 Waterloo Place, Oxford Road, University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK. Tel: +44 (0) 161 275 8985 / Fax: +44 (0) 161 275 8985 CRESC.AnnualConference@manchester.ac.uk / http://www.cresc.ac.uk

Proposals for performances, exhibitions and displays are welcome, but must be self-funded.