Call for Papers – International Conference
”Old Cities, Former Capitals and the Nation-State Building in Europe (18th-20th centuries):
regional and national identities”
29 August 2024
The Coimbra Group Social Sciences and Humanities Working Group (SSH WG) is pleased to announce the Call for Papers for the International Conference “Old Cities, Former Capitals and the Nation-State Building in Europe (18th – 20th centuries): regional and national identities” to take place on 19-21 November, 2024, at the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași, with co-funding from the Coimbra Group WGs Funding Scheme.
Call for Papers
The community identities in a society organized according to certain political principles, in a state, are one of the most persistent, fertile and controversial topics of debate in the social sciences and humanities. In a common understanding, regional identities would have a stronger connection with pre-modern forms of identity, historically constructed over a longer period of time, being specific to the political and cultural plurality of the medieval world, while national identities would be specific to modern “imagined communities“, based on a unitary cultural discourse and the political principle of collective sovereignty, according to which the political community (the nation) is the only legitimate constituent power. But is this the case?
The theme of our conference proposes an interdisciplinary debate around the forms of regional and national identities in the cultural and political discourse of modernity, but also in the political geography of the nation-states, taking its starting point from the changes that have occurred as a result of the integration of cities with a secular history as centres of political power and regional community cohesion into a nation-state. In order to provide potential participants with some clearer points of reference for debate, we have thought of a few sub-themes, which are of an indicative nature, but without limiting the openness to other relevant issues:
- Regional identities and national identity, with the aim of analyzing the interference between regional, political and cultural traditions and the discourse of national identity in the nineteenth century.
- National language and regional dialects: particularities of the linguistic transition in nineteenth century, on the standardization of the national language (etymological dictionary, grammar, cultural debates on the historical heritage and the features of the modern national language), etc.
- Center and periphery in the nation-state building: about the political inertia and economic adaptations/declines in some regions and cities with important political background in the past, on the features of the integration of regional elites into the institutional and political structure of the nation-state in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century.
- Regional historical memory and the discourse of decentralization/ regionalization in the second half of the twentieth century, about the balance between the principle of subsidiarity, the decentralization policies, the problem of economic disparities and the discourse of regional autonomy in the post-war period.
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Each participant in the International Conference “Old Cities, Former Capitals and the Nation-State Building in Europe (18th – 20th centuries): regional and national identities”will have 20 minutes for the presentation and 10 minutes for questions and discussions. The presentations can be delivered in English or French.
Submission Guidelines:
Please send the title of your paper, a summary of maximum 300 words and the information regarding your institutional affiliation by 15 October 2024, at the email addresses: cploscaru@yahoo.com ; mihut.cosmin@yahoo.com.
The organizers will provide, at your requests, half board accommodation for three nights. The scientific papers will be included in a conference volume, to be published by a prestigious publisher abroad, with a submission deadline of 1st March 2025.
Organizing Committee:
- PhD. Professor Raul Sanchez Prieto – Vice-Rector of the University of Salamanca, Chair of the Coimbra Group Social Sciences and Humanities Working Group
- PhD. Professor Efrem Yildiz Sadak – Spanish Language Department, University of Salamanca
- PhD. Professor Cristian Ploscaru – Faculty of History, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași
- PhD. Professor Daniela Cojocaru – Faculty of Philosophy and Social-Political Sciences, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași
- PhD. Researcher Liviu Brătescu – “A. D. Xenopol” Institute of History, Iași, Romanian Academy
- PhD. Associate Professor Gabriel Leanca – Faculty of History, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași
- PhD. Lecturer Cosmin Mihuț – Faculty of History, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași
- PhD. Researcher Mihai-Bogdan Atanasiu – Institute of Interdisciplinary Research, Department of Social Sciences and Humanities, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași
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We look forward to receiving your contributions and welcoming you to the International Conference “Old Cities, Former Capitals and the Nation-State Building in Europe (18th-20th centuries): regional and national identities”. Please contact info@coimbra-group.eu for any inquiries or further information.