Cities in Conflict
October 18-19 2007

This conference emerges from several themes explored in the Urban Cultures workshop sponsored by the Alice Berline Kaplan Institute for the Humanities (sponsored by a Mellon Foundation grant). Methodologically, we seek to foster interdisciplinary practices to study cities: their histories, forms, and the economic, social and cultural processes specific to the urban context. As the majority of the world's population now lives in urban settlements, the conditions of urban life demands critical attention. We aim to promote an interdisciplinary discussion about the stakes involved in studying cities broadly in terms of time and space. Thematically, we ask how to make sense of the experience of cities in crisis. In recent years the disaster of Hurricane Katrina and the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Sudan among others, have highlighted the need for scholars to address the specific crises facing urban inhabitants. Yet cities also struggle with everyday conflicts, such as inadequate water, housing, or educational services, which pose ongoing social, political, economic, cultural, and architectural challenges. Rights to the city, from political representation to the uses of urban space are unevenly distributed--another abiding source of conflict. Such rights may be practical, e.g. to build a house, or symbolic, e.g. to publicly commemorate the past. The basic question then is what is specifically urban about conflicts and their resolutions? And as scholars, what methods are productive for understanding the causes and effects of cities in crisis?