?Genesis’, the Journal of the Italian Association of Women Historians invites contributions for a forthcoming issue on gender relations in urban contexts.
In past years the study of urban contexts through an approach focused on the use of cities as resources has contributed to reshaping aspects of labour history, family and kin relations, and of social and geographical mobility as well as rethinking the intersection of public and private. Since then, national history has progressively lost its centrality, in favour of transnational and comparative approaches, and the search for connected histories. This has introduced a broad set of changing analytical scales requiring new theoretical and methodological instruments in the study of micro/macro interactions.
Open processes of urbanization, the agency of people moving and resettling have contributed to a redefinition of notions of space and boundaries, relentlessly crossed both in a physical, material and symbolic sense. Small , medium-size and large cities therefore appear as locations of both migration and settlement and moving across the urban space is strictly connected to material and social contexts. The gendered organization of urban social relations influences the ways in which individuals construct the material and symbolic space they experience
We encourage the submission of papers researching and analysing the gendered intersections of urban spaces and their transformations in a long diachronic perspective from the Middle Ages to the XXI century. While welcoming interdisciplinary contributions, we give priority to those taking into account a historical dimension.
We are especially interested in papers addressing:
– The changing boundaries between different cultures, the crossing of identities and belongings, liminal stages and cultural, religious, political, ethnic and generational hybridities; intersectionality integrating multiple and plural experiences
– Multilocal networks that connect, support, attract, control and redistribute moving subjects such as artisans and workers (standard and non-standard), shopkeepers, clerks, domestic servants, slaves, prostitutes, migrants, converts, minorities, marginal figures, communities in and beyond the city, young and old people and people committed to institutions.
– The urban dimension of dislocation connected to global chains of care work, as well as temporary urban aggregations of diasporic networks.
– The transformation of urban spaces due to changing material conditions and to the changing life style of individuals and groups.
– The various life strategies deployed in the context of specific limitations influencing choices, life courses and the gendered urban imaginary. Cities act as a permanent pole of attraction for migrating people and for individuals searching for new opportunities.
Proposals must contain: an abstract (no more than 300 words) and a short cv and must be e-mailed by November 20, 2014 to the editors: Anna Badino badinoanna@hotmail.com ; Ida Fazio ida@internetpiu.com ; Fiorella Imprenti fiorella.imprenti@gmail.com. They shall communicate by December 20, 2014 if the articles submitted have or not been selected for publication. Articles selected for publication (no more than 60.000 types including spaces and footnotes) must be sent in by March 15, 2015 and will then be submitted to a double blind referee.
Texts in Italian, English, French and Spanish will be considered for publication.