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Session description
Generalization and Synthesis in European Urban History
Abstract:
Scholarly activity among European urban historians is intense, as recent international conferences demonstrate. Yet most publications in the field are monographic or narrowly comparative. What kind of narrative is possible in this field, given the great range of cases and topical approaches? Relatively few synthetic works that tackle the urban history of the region or of a constituent nation-state have appeared in recent years.
Nevertheless, the demands of teaching the subject and presenting it effectively to students push practitioners to generalize. This session will bring together several urban specialists who have written or edited general treatments of European or of one country’s urban history. Each will discuss his or her strategies for constructing a broad-brush treatment of European cities and the problems of creating syntheses. While no formal papers will be presented, a set of questions will be circulated in advance, and the audience will be invited to comment on the problems they see either in existing syntheses or in the enterprise itself.
Session conveners:
- Lynn Lees
- Andrew Lees
Session type: Round Table
Classification: M - Modern
Communications
A german perspective
Author(s): Schott, Dieter
Cities and the making of modern Europe, 1750-1914
Author(s): Lees, Andrew ; Lynn, Lees
Editing the Cambridge Urban History of Britain
Author(s): Clark, Peter
Editing the Histoire de l'Europe urbaine
Author(s): Pinol, Jean-Luc
The transformation of Spanish cities, between the crisis of the colonial system (1898) and the Civil War (1936)
Author(s): Cardesín, José María ; Mirás, Jesús