<html>
<body>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite=""><br><br>
<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">The Group for the Study of Early
Cultures<br>
at the University of California, Irvine<br>
announces its <br>
First Annual Graduate Student Conference<br><br>
FRIENDS, FELLOWS, AND FORMS OF FREEDOM:<br>
PREMODERN CIVIL SOCIETIES<br><br>
Friday, November 21st, 2008, at UC Irvine<br>
Abstract Deadline: September 1st, 2008<br><br>
"Civil society" refers to the system of voluntary civic and
social networks that stand against the formality and force-backed
structure of the state. It includes such institutions and formations as
the press, guilds and unions, religious communities, friendships, the
theatre, schools and universities, and many other groups whose members
share interests and activities. In the seventeenth century, the phrase
"civil society" was still synonymous with political life as
such; by the end of the eighteenth century, the phrase had come to
designate all those forms of social life that are not the state. To
pursue the shapes and origins of civil society before modernity, then, is
to attend to the process by which "politics" and
"society" separated from each other as distinct spheres of
human association and to imagine different forms their relationship to
each other might take.<br><br>
This conference will attempt to discover the outlines, origins, or
equivalents of "civil society" in the ancient, medieval, and
Renaissance periods, in Europe and globally. Were earlier civilizations
freer to imagine more egalitarian and less restricted social
relationships in the absence of a codified civil/political distinction?
At any particular moment, is civil society characterized more by unity or
by diversity? Order or freedom? Hierarchy or equality? What effects did
civil society have on literature and art, or vice versa, and what genres
(the letter, the essay, the proverb, the comedy, the symposium, and the
dialogue, as well as guides to comportment and "civil
conversation") were specific to it? What role did religion play in
establishing networks of social relationship? What historical events and
pressures led to the separation of civil society from the state? What
role did the incorporated structure of the medieval city play in
establishing the localized economic basis of modern citizenship, and how
did the forms of "civil" citizenship interact or compete with
"political" citizenship? How did forms of education dictate
membership, participation, and modes of communication in civil societies,
and in what ways were these forms continuous or not through periods of
social, political, and religious change? How did the institutions and
iconographies of gender, marriage, friendship, family, hospitality,
gift-giving, love, labor, race, class, and nationality help establish
pre-modern civil societies or their equivalents? <br><br>
CALL FOR PAPERS:<br>
We invite all interested graduate students from any university in any
discipline to submit a one-page abstract on any topic dealing with
premodern civil societies. Please send abstracts as word documents
attached to e-mails to BOTH conference organizers, Jacob McDonie
(<a href="mailto:rmcdonie@uci.edu">rmcdonie@uci.edu</a>) and Jesse Weiner
(<a href="mailto:weinerj@uci.edu">weinerj@uci.edu</a>), by September 1st,
2008. We will notify all applicants of our decisions by September 21st,
2008. We will try to provide out-of-town participants with housing with
UCI graduate students. Please direct all inquiries to the conference
organizers. <br><br>
<br>
-- <br>
R. Jacob McDonie<br>
Department of English<br>
University of California, Irvine<br><br>
Magnarum rerum, ut ait quidam, etiam ipse conatus magnus est. <br>
--Aelred of Rievaulx <br>
Content-Type: application/msword; name=CFP.doc<br>
X-Attachment-Id: f_fh2lnpcy0<br>
Content-Disposition: attachment;
filename=CFP.doc</blockquote></blockquote></body>
</html>