[Englecturers] Call for papers: UCI Early Cultures Graduate Student Conference

[John Ganim]

>The Group for the Study of Early Cultures at the University of 
>California, Irvine announces its First Annual Graduate Student Conference
>
>FRIENDS, FELLOWS, AND FORMS OF FREEDOM:
>PREMODERN CIVIL SOCIETIES
>
>Friday, November 21st, 2008, at UC Irvine Key-Note Speaker: Page 
>duBois,  Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature, UC San 
>Diego Abstract Deadline: September 1st, 2008
>
>"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.
>
>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?
>
>CALL FOR PAPERS:
>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
>(rmcdonie at uci.edu) and Jesse Weiner (weinerj at uci.edu), 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.
>
>* * * * * * * * * * * *
>
>Note: You have received this announcement because you are affiliated 
>with the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (faculty 
>member, associate/affiliate, staff, or council), or because you 
>requested to be on our email announcement list.  If you wish to be 
>removed from the list, please contact us at cmrs at humnet.ucla.edu.
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