Community Dynamics: Urban Spaces, Rural Places, and the In-Between
DEADLINE EXTENDED: 25 February 2024
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Space multifariously reflects and shapes the human experience. Space is imbued with all kinds of events, memories, and stories. Human action unfolds within space, human perception defines it, and human behavior molds and is molded by it. Space is mutually constitutive of human culture. Communal gatherings, from ancient Jericho to Renaissance London, have transformed the natural environment and given rise to interconnected communities. The conscious use and transformation of spatial resources lie at the heart of the dynamic relationship between nature and humankind.
The division of space into categories such as cities, suburbs, and rural areas plays a pivotal role in the human experience. In the Iliad, the high walls of Troy guard the city, besieged by an army encamped on the seashore. Vergil composed his Aeneid as Augustus wrote his new regime onto the city of Rome through art and architecture. Medieval London was often compared to celestial Jerusalem, while Florence was the Athens of the Middle Ages. Suburbs, with their theaters, brothels, and inns, served as fertile ground for intriguing encounters in the 16th century and beyond. These examples illustrate the critical role of space emerging time and again as humans strive to make sense of and represent their existence.
Even in the most urbanized periods, most premodern people lived outside of cities. In the Works and Days, Hesiod praises the worthiness of agrarian toil. In the Bible, Esau, a man of the field, has a power struggle with Jacob, a man dwelling in tents. Chaucer’s pilgrims hail from diverse corners of England, converging in a suburban tavern en route to a shrine at Canterbury. In Arthurian legend, knights venture from castles and courts to seek adventures in enchanting forests. Still, the rural is often imagined from an urban perspective, such as when shepherds amidst idyllic landscapes embody the human connection to nature.
Societies in ancient, medieval, and early-modern epochs did not merely document space; they imagined it. The spatial play in the Utopian imagination manifests humans’ desire for alternative models of society. Dante wove together geography and landscape in the Divine Comedy to align with his poetics of redemption. From Herodotus to Marco Polo to eighteenth-century travel literature, distant lands provided fertile grounds to imagine the other.
Space also transcends the physical. Space, per Henri Lefebvre, is a “social morphology” that is “intimately bound up with function and structure” (Production of Space, 94). Urban and communal spaces birthed intricate social relationships, some of which were codified, like the law codes of Ancient Greece, the Rule of St Benedict for monasteries, or the municipal charter books of medieval free cities, but many were not. Indeed, social interactions within the ecosystem of a community, as highlighted by Pierre Bourdieu, depend on the relative position of social actors within the spaces that they collectively fashion. Still, as the rise of ecocriticism has shown, the importance of space applies beyond our limited human experience.
Understanding space, therefore, necessitates an interdisciplinary approach. This conference warmly invites contributions from scholars working in art history, literature, philosophy, history, classical studies, musicology, religious studies, cultural studies, archaeology, social sciences, and beyond, from antiquity to the early modern era. We also welcome studies on the cultural dialogue between East and West. Topics may include, but are not limited to:
- The archaeology of space
- Intersectionality of urban/suburban/ rural spaces
- Space and ecocriticism
- Boundaries and borders
- Space as an anchor for communities
- Gender and/in space
- Artistic exploration and exploitation of space
- Space and Utopia/Nowhere
- Space and migration
- Space and sound/music
- Thinking space and society
TACMRS warmly invites papers in English or Chinese, both within and beyond the traditional chronological, geographic, and disciplinary borders of Classical, Medieval, and Early Modern Studies. Proposals for individual papers and for panels of two to four speakers (with individual abstracts) are welcomed. To ensure the quality of the papers presented, presenters should submit drafts of full papers by the end of September 2024. Selected full papers in English will be peer-reviewed and published in a special issue of the journal Ex-position, and selected full papers in Chinese will be peer-reviewed and published in a special issue of the journal Chung-Wai Literary Quarterly.
Please submit anonymized proposals in English (250 words) or Chinese (500 characters), with 3-6 keywords and a one-page CV, to tacmrs.ntu@gmail.com by 25 February 2024. Both the abstract and CV should be in .docx format. The conference will take place in a hybrid format on 1-2 November 2024 at the National Taiwan University in Taipei, Taiwan. Please note that presenters should be members of TACMRS if they reside in Taiwan. For information about membership and the association, please visit the TACMRS website at https://tacmrs.org.tw/. For more information about the conference, please visit the 2024 TACMRS Conference website at https://2024tacmrs.wordpress.com.
城郊之間：空間、地方與群之動態
空間以多樣的方式反映並塑造著人類經驗。空間中充滿著各種事件、記憶和故事。人類的行動於空間中展開，人類的感知定義空間，人類的行為形塑了空間，同時也受其形塑。空間與人類文化相互構成。從古代的耶利哥城到文藝復興時期的倫敦，人們的聚集改變了自然環境，並孕育出連結緊密的社區。人類對空間資源有意識地使用和改造，是自然與人類之間動態關係的核心。
空間的劃分，如城市、郊區和鄉村，在人類經驗中具有重要的作用。在《伊里亞德》中，特洛伊的高牆守護著這座被紮營在海岸的軍隊所包圍的城市。當奧古斯都透過藝術和建築將他的新政權寫入羅馬城時，維吉爾創作了《伊尼亞斯紀》。中世紀的倫敦常被比喻為神聖的耶路撒冷，而佛羅倫斯則是中世紀的雅典城。在16世紀及其後，擁有劇院、妓院和客棧的郊區成為擁有各種可能性的邂逅場所。這些例子闡述了在人類努力理解和表現自身存在的過程中，空間的關鍵作用一再顯現。
在現代化之前，即使是在都市化程度最高的時期，大多數人們仍生活在城市外。在《工作與時日》中，赫西俄德讚美了農耕勞動的價值。《聖經》中，以打獵維生的以掃和居於帳篷中的雅各有著權力鬥爭。喬叟筆下的朝聖者來自英國各個角落，在前往坎特伯里朝聖的路上，他們相聚在城郊一家小酒館裡。在亞瑟王傳奇中，騎士們從城堡和宮廷出發，穿越充滿冒險驚奇的森林。然而，鄉村通常是從城市的角度想像的，比如在田園風光中的牧羊人便象徵著人類與自然的連結。
古代、中世紀和近現代早期的社會不僅僅記錄了空間，它們更塑造了人們對空間的想像。烏托邦幻想中的空間塑造，彰顯了人類對不同社會模型的渴望。但丁在《神曲》中交錯編織著地理與景觀，完成他的救贖詩學。從希羅多德到馬可．波羅、再到十八世紀的旅行文學，遙遠的他方成為想像他者的沃土。
空間也超越了物理層面。亨利．列斐伏爾（Henri Lefebvre）認為，空間是一種「社會形態學」，它與「功能和結構密切相關」（《空間的生產》頁94）。城市和公共空間孕育了錯綜複雜的社會關係，有些已經受到制度規範，如古希臘的法典、修道院的《聖本篤院規》，和中世紀自由城市的市政憲章，但許多則沒有。社區生態系統內的社會互動，確實如皮耶．布赫迪厄（Pierre Bourdieu）所強調，取決於社會行為者在共同塑造的空間中的相對位置。然而，隨著生態批評的興起所顯示，空間的重要性遠超出我們人類有限的經驗。
因此，理解空間需要透過跨學科的研究方法。本屆會議誠摯邀請藝術史、文學、哲學、歷史、古典研究、音樂學、宗教研究、文化研究、考古學、社會科學等及其他領域中，研究古典時期至早期現代的專家學者賜稿。同時，我們亦歡迎東西方文化對話的研究。論文徵稿的主題包括（但不限於）以下子題：
- 空間考古學
- 城市、郊區、鄉村空間的交織關係
- 空間與生態批評
- 分界與疆界
- 空間作為社區的錨定點
- 性別與空間/空間中的性別
- 空間的藝術性探索和運用
- 空間與烏托邦/無地之境
- 空間與移民
- 空間與聲音/音樂
- 探究空間與社會
台灣西洋古典、中世紀暨文藝復興學會誠摯邀稿，歡迎古典、中世紀與近現代早期領域之論文，及跨越傳統時空順序性、地理疆界性和學科分界的論文投稿。稿件中、英文不拘。本屆會議接受個人或小組（二至四名發表者）提案投稿，小組投稿請檢附各篇論文摘要。為了確保發表之論文品質，請發表者須於2024年9月30日前繳交論文全文初稿。研討會後將徵求論文，於進行同儕審查後刊登於期刊Ex-position與《中外文學》特刊。
敬請有意者於2024年2月25日前，將匿名摘要 ( 英文 250 字為限；中文 500 字為限 )、三至六個關鍵詞，以及一頁的個人簡歷寄至tacmrs.ntu@gmail.com。論文摘要和簡歷須以.docx格式提交。本次會議將採實體和線上方式同步進行，會議謹定於2024年11月1-2日於國立臺灣大學舉行。論文發表者若居住於臺灣，須具備台灣西洋古典、中世紀暨文藝復興學會有效會員資格。申請入會之詳細資訊，請參閱TACMRS學會網站：https://tacmrs.org.tw/。更多會議相關資訊，請見2024 TACMRS會議網站：https://2024tacmrs.wordpress.com。
2024 TACMRS Conference 