16th Annual Graduate Conference in European History (GRACEH) (Web)

Time: 11.-13.04.2021
Venue: University of Oxford
Proposals by: 15.12.2021

What is nature, and does it have a history? According to British philosopher Kate Soper, ‘the natural is both distinguished from the human and the cultural, but [is] also the concept through which we pose questions about the more or less natural or articial quality of our own behaviour and cultural formations; about the existence and quality of human nature; and about the respective roles of nature and culture in the formation of individuals and their social milieu’. In what ways, then, can nature be historicized?
The organizers invite graduate students working on any topic or period in European history and/or Europe in the world to consider the place of ‘nature’ in their research. The organizers define nature in the broadest possible sense, including its material, social, political, and cultural dimensions.
This conference is open to all graduate students. The organizers particularly encourage submissions from those who have not presented their work at conferences before or are from underrepresented regions and/or institutions. The organizers hope to be able to support travel and/or accommodation for a limited number of presenters without access to institutional funding. Topics may include but are not limited to:

• The relationship between nature and humans: How has nature shaped the existence of humans over the centuries? How have humans exploited nature, and to what extent have natural forces been a hindrance or impetus for change? What is the relationship between nature and power? Topics could include: ecosystems and human economy, post-human and more-than-human approaches to history, natural and supernatural forces and creatures, animal history
• Environmental history: How has the environment shaped human societies throughout history and vice-versa? How have humans responded to environmental crises? What is the present and future of environmental history? Topics could include: climate changes, environmentalism and environmental social movements, concepts of the anthropocene, history of ecology. Read more … (Web)

Forschungsnetzwerk Geschlecht • Macht • Staat (Web)

Zeit: 23.-25.11.2022
Ort: Philipps-Universität Marburg
Einreichfrist: 15.01.2022

Since the late 15th century, discursive and social practices as well as media representations of power, sovereignty, and gender can be observed in relation to contemporary processes of early state formation, which aim at a specific consolidation and expansion of hierarchical gender orders. Throughout the centuries, strategies to legitimize specific power relations have employed above all historically grown traditions in their argumentation, the powerful impact of which allegedly shows in the longue durée. An analytical focus on continuities, however, threatens to obscure historical ruptures as well as reinterpretations and reframings of earlier media representations. Inconsistencies and conflicts between norms and social practices are also likely to fall from view.

Therefore, the interdisciplinary research network „Gender • Power Relations • State“ in cooperation with the Center for Gender Studies and Feminist Future Studies (UMR) and the Center for Media and Interactivity (JLU Gießen) will host an international and interdisciplinary 2-day conference, to examine the power relations at work in the construction, dissemination, and persistence of such narratives and to analyze their interrelations with social practices, processes of standardization, and media representations.

The conference aims to study the interdependent web of tensions between gender, power relations, and the state across centuries. Transformations, renegotiations, and revisionings in specific configurations of gendered power will be brought into focus. The intersection of institutionalizations of state power with naturalizing gender discourses specific to the respective epochs will be problematized from the angles of manifold disciplinary approaches to gender studies. In doing so, a progress- and modernization-oriented master narrative of increasing gender equality will be confronted with the limitations and closures of a scope of opportunities and possibilities to women through processes of formalization and legalization in the course of state formation until the 21th century.

Such an interdisciplinary and transepochal merging and further developing of existing analytical approaches and perspectives has not yet been attempted. The organizers assume that such an interdisciplinary and historically profound synopsis along the analytical levels of … read more and source (Web).