Call for Papers // Urban Exile: Theories, Methods, Research Practices

Although it is widely accepted that migration shapes cities, until now, exile research has rarely been written from an urban perspective. By taking up this challenge, this publication will make a significant contribution to the theory and methodology of research on exile, cities and modernities. It will focus on historical dislocations in the first half of the 20th century, when modern movements constituted themselves in global exchange. In cities around the world migration contributed significantly to the transformation of urban spaces by forming new communities, neighbourhoods and artists’ quarters. Experiences of exile by locals and migrants alike shaped a basis for changed perceptions of the urban spaces in which they lived and worked. When we examine artistic practices, for example, we find evidence of migrants capturing their new surroundings in photographs, drawings and writings.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach and a historical perspective, the contributions to this volume will formulate various theoretical and methodological approaches as well as research practices, investigating how exile and urbanity are intertwined. Drawing on examples from a wide range of urban centres around the world, contributors from various disciplines will share their thoughts, experiences and concepts relating to the challenges and benefits surrounding the nexus of exile and urban research. This anthology will engage lines of inquiry from contemporary post-migrant urban research and historicize them. By choosing the term exile as a central category for methodological and theoretical investigations of urban culture, we aim to rethink its application in a transnational, global context, thereby considering the varying concepts, historical usages and trajectories behind it.

Possible themes could include: walking/strolling; mapping; databases and digital mappings; archives and sources; orientation and notation (e.g. address books, notebooks, city maps); reading/writing the city; media/photography as source; networks; routes; performativity/relational bodies; infrastructures; queerness/gender/sexuality; social life and social spaces; segregation; “post-migrant” urban research; arrival cities and neighborhoods of migration; soundscapes; materiality/surfaces of the city; oral history; artistic research.

We seek contributions in the form of theory and method oriented essays (3000-4000 words) as well as visual essays that develop theoretical and methodological approaches (1000 words + images).

Deadline for abstracts: 15 July 2020. Deadline for full contributions: 15 December 2020.

Please send your abstract (in English, max. 300 words) and short CV in a single PDF document by 15 July 2020 to: laura.karp.lugo@kunstgeschichte.uni-muenchen.de

This publication is an outcome of the ERC research project Relocating Modernism: Global Metropolises, Modern Art and Exile (METROMOD) situated at the Institute of Art History, LMU Munich. It will be edited by the METROMOD team: Ekaterina Aygün, Burcu Dogramaci, Mareike Hetschold, Laura Karp Lugo, Rachel Lee, and Helene Roth.