Final Call for Papers
London in Text and History, 1400-1700
13-15 September, Jesus College, Oxford

Organisers: Ian Archer (Oxford), Matthew Davies (Centre for Metropolitan History, London), Ian Gadd (Bath Spa), Tracey Hill (Bath Spa), Paulina Kewes (Oxford)

Plenary speakers: Caroline Barron, Paul Griffiths, Rob Hume, Mark Jenner, Mark Knights, Peter Lake and Peter Stallybrass

This conference will focus on the variety of metropolitan identities, and how these were constructed, represented, and contested by contemporaries through a variety of media, including text (broadly defined), visual culture, maps, architecture and performance.

Between 1400 and 1700, London expanded hugely in population; it was affected by religious and political upheaval; it emerged from the shadow of its near-neighbour European competitors to become a world metropolis; and its physical face was transformed by the dissolution and the Great Fire. Our concern, however, is not so much with what these political, economic, or religious changes were but rather how they were figured in a range of forms and genres: ballads, drama, civic shows, sermons, pamphlets, poems, urban chronicles, topographical guides, paintings, engravings, and maps.

Lively literatures exist for medieval and early modern London but they rarely engage with each other nor do studies of post-Restoration London connect with the pre-civil war period. Consequently, plenary speakers will range widely to set up the major areas of debate, while the panels will be designed to encompass broad time-spans and to facilitate exchange among scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, including history, literature, art history, architecture and cartography. The conference will also reflect on the impact of some 10-15 yearsworth of unprecedented scholarly attention to London.

Proposals for papers (300 words max) should be sent by email to ian.archer@history.ox.ac.uk or t.hill@bathspa.ac.uk by 1st March 2007.