Cultural Histories of Empire.- The 2023 annual conference of the International Society for Cultural History
19-22 June 2023
Singapore
Empire has been a persistent form of human organization and one of the primary mechanisms for the dispersion of cultural forms. Some of the earliest known empires include the great imperial formations in Mesopotamia in the second millennium BCE and in Persia and around the Mediterranean in the first millennium BCE. Over the past two millennia, empires have appeared in all regions of the world, including in the Americas (Tawantinsuyu), Asia (the Mughal Empire, Khmer Empire), Europe (the Austro-Hungarian Empire), Oceania (the Tu’i Tonga Empire), and Africa (the Mali Empire, the Songhai Empire). They have also cut across large swaths of the planet (such as the British, Spanish, and Dutch empires). Although decolonization was a defining historical process of the twentieth century, the expansionist efforts of nation-states today suggest that empire remains a political, military, and economic strategy and a geographic and cultural ambition.
For its first conference in Asia, the International Society for Cultural History invites paper and panel proposals on the theme of “Cultural Histories of Empire.” Historians and contextually oriented scholars working on any period or location are encouraged to explore (but are by no means limited to) the following topics:
-imperial culture: literature, music, art, religion, sport (cricket, horse racing, rugby, etc.)
-iconographies of imperial power
-conceptual terminology in the study of empires
-forms of resistance to and subversion of imperial authority
-inter-imperial commodity chains, trade journeys
-nationalistic movements, transitions from empire to nation-state
-the embodied experiences of empire
-environmental colonialism
-everyday empire: street signs, posters, patterns of consumption
-the circulation of periodicals and imperial press systems
-leisure practices, such as reading, cooking, hiking, and feasts in imperial contexts
-performances of colonial authority: ceremonies, hearings, trials, gatherings
-popular attitudes toward empire
-imperial propaganda: Ara Pacis, literature, public monuments, film, radio, television, rhetoric (“political spin”), etc.
-travel writing (memoir, journalism, blogs, letters), adventure fiction
-informal empire
As always, we also welcome panel and paper proposals on methods and theories of cultural history; new approaches to cultural history; and the history of cultural history.