FW: Call for papers: Ab Imperio 2009 Annual Program: HOMO IMPERII: THE IMPERIAL SITUATION OF MULTIPLE TEMPORALITIES AND HETEROGENEOUS SPACES

Sat Sep 20 17:06:28 UTC 2008

Dear colleagues,

Ab Imperio invites contributions to the four issues of the journal in 2009.
Please, find the annual program below.

For inquiries, submissions, or subscription, please, visit the journal¡¯s
website at http://abimperio.net 

Sergey Glebov

 2009 annual theme:

Homo Imperii: The Imperial Situation of Multiple Temporalities 
and Heterogeneous Space

When Marc Bloch coined his famous definition of history as a science about
humans in time,[1] he anticipated by several decades the ¡°anthropological
turn¡± in historical studies. The humanistic message of Bloch¡¯s formulation
is ambivalent: does it suggest that human beings change together with the
circumstances of ¡°total history,¡± or that they remain essentially the same
throughout different epochs and situations? Is it really possible to
¡°translate¡± adequately the life experience of a representative of a
certain epoch in terms of a different time period? How do ¡°grand
narratives¡± look through the prism of an individual¡¯s life experience? How
does one¡¯s life perception depend on the different aspects of the imperial
situation that may combine uneven social and cultural spaces, and elements
of different epochs, both archaic and modern? Can the methods of
biographical writing and prosopography be regarded as an alternative to
grand, depersonalized historical narratives? Writing biography is
inconceivable without taking into consideration time and space as crucial
factors, but how does the specificity of these features affect human life
and its perception?

¡í 1/2009 Narrating the Multiple Self: New Biographies for the Empire

In search of an analytic model of biography in the imperial context ¡¤ the
autobiographical narrative in its imperial and national contexts ¡¤ national
heroes and international swindlers ¡¤ national history as a heroic saga ¡¤
historians of empire and nation as heroes from the past ¡¤ personality cults
in the culturally divided society ¡¤ the enemy: forging a superman¡¯s
biography ¡¤ biography beyond borders: biographies of cosmopolitan
intellectuals and a history of the phenomenon of cosmopolitanism in the 18th
¨C 20th centuries ¡¤ the migration of experiences, ideas, and practices
across the borders of continental and colonial empires ¡¤ biography and myth
¡¤ the privatization of social experience in the personal life story ¡¤ the
¡°small man¡± in the heterogeneous space ¡¤ the biography and prosopography
of bureaucratic cadres in Russian empire, and of party nomenclature in the
Soviet Union ¡¤ the personal dimension of foreign policy.

¡í 2/2009 Homo Imperii in Space and Time: Settling and Unsettling Imperial
Spaces

Mappa mundi, homo imperii ¡¤ garden cities ¡¤ a free port or a naval
stronghold ¡¤ humans and temporality in the capital and in the provinces: a
history of imperial cities ¡¤ the rotation of cadres, workforce migration,
and travel ¡¤ a new appointment: governors and administrators changing
workplaces ¡¤ biography as the ¡°interpretation of travel¡± ¡¤ Friday,
Saturday, Sunday: when does empire rest? ¡¤ calendars and clocks ¡¤ the many
dimensions of empire: moving in space as traveling in time ¡¤ the five-stage
Marxist historical scheme: ¡°the empire of history¡± ¡¤ constructing the
¡°spheres of vital interests¡± in the foreign policy of Russian empire and
Soviet Union ¡¤ conception of individual, social, generational, and
political ¡°age¡± ¡¤ membership in a generation.

¡í 3/2009 Maison des sciences de l¡¯Homme: Human Sciences in the Empire

The history of enlightenment in Russia as a project of normalization and
Europeanization ¡¤ scientific classifications of the population ¡¤
borrowings and adaptations of the scientific discourses and practices of
nineteenth-century colonial empires as a condition of admittance into the
club of European colonial powers ¡¤ psychology, its subjects and its objects
of study ¡¤ social sciences in imperial context ¡¤ the sciences of imperial
diversity: anthropology, ethnography, linguistics, etc. ¡¤ museums and
exhibitions as imperial ¡°Panopticons¡± ¡¤ political human sciences in
empire ¡¤ the humanistic paradigm and the problem of representation of the
modern personality ¡¤ medicine as a language of studying the individual and
society ¡¤ the imperial concept of norm and deviation ¡¤ scientific
foundations of uprising against empire ¡¤ projects of rational cognition and
re-description of empire and its inhabitants ¡¤ ¡°caring for souls:¡±
theology on personality and empire.

¡í 4/2009 From Homo Imperii to Civitas: Projects of Imagined Imperial
Communities

Is civic society possible in empire? ¡¤ Projects of state reform of imperial
population: social engineering from above in empire ¡¤ great ideologies on
¡°small men¡± and their communities ¡¤ ¡°underground Russia¡± as an
alternative social network ¡¤ the corporate structure of imperial society:
cooperative, professional, confessional, et al. self-organization ¡¤ Utopian
projects of imperial society ¡¤ political parties and movements and programs
of imperial social reform ¡¤ the empire of ¡°obshchestvennost¡¯¡± in Russia
and USSR. 

Permanent Sections:

Theory and Methodology n History n Archive n Sociology, Anthropology &
Political Science n ABC: Empire & Nationalism Studies n Newest Mythologies n
Historiography and Book Reviews.

For subscription please contact our authorized commercial distributors: www.
amazon.com,
East View Publications, EBSCO, and 
KUBON & SAGNER Buchexport-Import. 

  _____  

[1] In the 1950s, this formula (¡°Science des hommes¡ dans le temps¡±) was
translated into English in the both old-fashioned and misleading way: ¡°The
science of men¡ in time¡±, even though in the next sentence Bloch clarified
the meaning of the word: ¡°L¡¯historien ne pense pas seulement ¡®humain¡¯¡±
¨C ¡°think [only] of the human.¡± Cf.: Marc Bloch. Apologie pour l¡¯histoire
ou M¨¦tier d¡¯historien. 2e ¨¦dition. Paris, 1952. Pp. 4-5; Marc Bloch. The
Historian¡¯s Craft. New York, 1953. P. 27.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

<>

If you wish to unsubscribe from the SEELANGS List, please send an E-mail to:
"listserv at listserv.cuny.edu".  Within the body of the text, only write the
following:
"SIGNOFF SEELANGS".

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------