Present in the City. Urban Temporalities and rhythms in Northwestern Europe (14th-17th centuries)

Present in the City. Urban Temporalities and rhythms in Northwestern Europe (14th-17th centuries)

Veranstalter
Élodie Lecuppre-Desjardin; Anne-Frédérique Provou; Sebastian Hackbarth (Université de Lille)
Ausrichter
Université de Lille
Gefördert durch
SNF-Sinergia
PLZ
59650
Ort
Villeneuve-d'Ascq
Land
Deutschland
Findet statt
In Präsenz
Vom - Bis
01.10.2025 - 03.10.2025
Deadline
15.02.2025
Von
Sebastian Hackbarth

Present in the City. Urban Temporalities and rhythms in Northwestern Europe (14th-17th centuries)

The conference will focus on urban perceptions of time and rhythms in Northwestern Europe from the 14th to the 17th century. Its goal is to deepen our understanding of how these societies perceived and structured their present.

The conference languages are French and English. Participants are expected to have at least passive knowledge of French to fully engage with the research discussions.

Present in the City. Urban Temporalities and rhythms in Northwestern Europe (14th-17th centuries)

Die Tagung widmet sich den urbanen Zeitwahrnehmungen und Rhythmen im Nordwesten Europas zwischen dem 14. und 17. Jahrhundert. Ziel ist es, ein tieferes Verständnis dafür zu gewinnen, wie diese Gesellschaften ihre Gegenwart wahrnahmen und strukturierten.

Die Tagungssprachen sind Französisch und Englisch. Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmer sollten über mindestens passive Französischkenntnisse verfügen, um den Forschungsdiskussionen umfassend folgen zu können.

La ville au présent : Temporalités et rythmes urbains en Europe occidentale (XIVe-XVIIe siècle)

La conférence portera sur les temporalités et les rythmes urbains en Europe du Nord-Ouest entre le XIVe et le XVIIe siècle. L’objectif est de mieux comprendre comment ces sociétés percevaient et organisaient leur présent.

Les langues de la conférence sont le français et l’anglais. Les participants sont invités à disposer d’au moins une compréhension passive du français afin de pouvoir suivre pleinement les discussions scientifiques.

Present in the City. Urban Temporalities and rhythms in Northwestern Europe (14th-17th centuries)

“Temporalities are a common code for deciphering space and giving an account of a complex, contextualized world”. This quotation from geographer Françoise Lucchini (2015) opens up an original reading of urban space, considered in the rhythm of its own pulsations. The city, as a space that is built, developed, inhabited and conceived, has been the subject of numerous studies, which have occasionally introduced a temporal dimension to their reflections, enabling us to better grasp the dynamics of its evolutions and urban practices. However, it has to be said that the “sense of time”, captured in the rhythms of daily life and the planned organization of places, has attracted more attention from geographers, urban planners, sociologists and historians of the 19th and 20th centuries. The acceleration of time induced by industrialization, the great urban metamorphoses that accompanied it and the development of new technologies undoubtedly makes it easier to take hold of this elusive material that is time and to forge a presentist “regime of historicity”, supposedly specific to the contemporary period, according to the expression conceived by François Hartog (2003).

This expression has become so popular that it now seems obvious and indisputable that not only is “presentism” a fact of our modernity, but also that we should necessarily be disappointed by it. And yet, for several decades now, Peter Burke’s (2004) commentary on Jacques Le Goff’s pioneering observations on “merchant time” has been inviting us to explore the living matter of medieval and early modern cities, to better understand the meaning of the multiplicity of temporalities concentrated in a single place, and to question the relationship between the “field of experience” and the “horizons of expectation” of medieval communities (Koselleck 1979). There is thus another cultural history of time to be written, in which forms of presentism other than the one that prevails today may have asserted themselves.

At least, that’s the idea behind this meeting, part of the SNSF-Sinergia project “Capturing the Present in Northwestern Europe (1348-1648)”. The aim is to capture not only the measurement of present time, but also the feeling of its passing,which so troubled the mind of Saint Augustine and all those who strove to define it. The question of subjectively experienced time may seem trivial. But placing it in a particular context, determined by as many parameters as places, social status, ages, activities, individual or collective ambitions, political or economic imperatives, etc., gives it all its richness and fulfils the wishes of Marc Bloch, for whom history must approach “the human moment when these currents tighten in the powerful node of consciences” (Bloch, 1949). In the comparison offered by a vast Western urban Europe, which will support studies more specifically dedicated to its northern part, in order to grasp its specificities, the aim of this meeting is to observe city dwellers caught up in the game of multiple temporalities that cross them and feed their sense of belonging or exclusion to different social groups.

How do city dwellers (and those who pass through them) live in the present? How do they share this individual experience within the communities to which they refer or are assigned? Can we speak of time communities , shaped by the contours of a social group, political membership or shared faith? What degree of awareness and what cultural foundation underlies this apprehension and representation of the present, considered as much for its own sake as for the past it synthesizes and the future it heralds? These are just some of the questions that will be addressed. Daily rhythms, the dynamics of events, intimate time, risk control and the impact of accidents, the suspension of action – these are just some of the perspectives that will enable historians of practical sources, literature and images to examine the city as lived and thought in the present(s) of those who live in it.

Researchers wishing to take part in this event are asked to send a short CV, a title and a 300-word summary of their paper by February 15, 2025.

Kontakt

sebastian.hackbarth@univ-lille.fr

https://capt.hypotheses.org/3547
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Französisch
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