Common images of early modern cities are hard to refute: Who, for example, ever read the widely reviewed and picturised novel “Das Parfum” (The Perfume) by Patrick Süßkind finds himself confirmed in the opinion that almost every European town before 1850 – and especially the metropolises – were dirty and stinking places. Historians have advanced contradictory interpretations with regard to the behavior of contemporary councilors, servants and inhabitants: One the one hand researchers explain, coevals were so much used to the conditions that they took things for given. On the other hand it is often assumed that contemporary eyes and noses were not generally blind and stub for urban conditions, but were trained to ignore most of these sensations.
What is revealed here is a classic interpretation problem of historical sciences: Modern 'standards' of urban life are applied to contemporary reports: they are read and interpreted with modern eyes – and noses. But contemporary inhabitants and councilors had their own, time period-bound perceptions of cleanliness and hygiene and, especially during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, established procedures to implement politics responding to those perceptions.

The Specialist Session welcomes contributions that
(i) deal with medical and administrative debates on urban hygiene and the development of hygienic perceptions until ca 1850.
(ii) focus on techniques of control and concrete sanctions, that were used by (city) authorities to monitor and improve the hygienic situation of urban spaces.
(iii) discuss the role of urban population in discussion on and handling of urban hygiene.

All papers may be focused on questions of practice, concerning the contemporary considerations to improve city space, political agenda, procedures to implement them and the “instruments” that are most importantly: the use of senses in times before "bacteriology" was established.
The aim is to create a basis for understanding contemporary hygienic assumptions concerning life in urban spaces.

Please submit a 300-word abstract online, via the EAUH 2016 website: https://eauh2016.net/
Deadline for paper proposals submission: October 31, 2015
Notification of paper acceptance: December 15, 2015

Suggestion for young scholars: The European Association for Urban History has bursaries for postgraduate doctoral and postdoctoral students without paid posts under 35 years (on 24th September 2016). The bursaries cover the full registration costs of students whose papers have been accepted for sessions, but all other costs (e.g. travel, accommodation) must be paid by the applicant. There will also be a limited number of Travel Bursaries to be announced later.