The Roles of the City in the Books of CLIOHRES

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  • Luďa Klusáková
  • Karel Kubiš
  • Božena Radiměřská

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14712/12128112.3606

Klíčová slova:

cities, communities, culture, identities, frontiers, spatial scales, CLIOHRES Network

Abstrakt

Through an analysis of the approach to the concepts of frontiers and identities in four books of the CLIOHRES Network the authors of this article found a very up-to-date contribution to the broad understanding of urban history. The article suggests pondering about current paths of the specific research field of urban history, which is not easy to define. The city itself was not the object of research of the members of the network, but rather a space for analysis of more general questions. Although the focus on the city was often instrumental, the authors understood its paradigmatic function. The analysis highlighted intensive interest in spatial scales and questioning of the two key concepts of frontiers and identities simultaneously in interaction. The urban perspective was not felt as a reduction or limitation. Frontiers and identities played a key role, even if they were not in focus. During the last two or three decades the research field of urban history went through considerable transformation. Some urban historians even speak about its semantic expansion. While classical urban historiography focused on the city and urban society as an object of analysis, current research very often studies past societies only through the optics of the life of cities. The microcosm of cities is explored as a showcase of the society or only as its sample, as a representation of the society of the period or of its mentali¬ty. These new approaches to urban studies are present in the books analyzed in the following pages.

Biografie autora

Luďa Klusáková

is a full Professor of History (2009) at Palacký University in Olomouc. Since 2000, she has been chairing the Seminar of General and Comparative History at the Faculty of Arts at Charles University in Prague. She took her scientific degree from the same university in 1981 for her comparative research on the modernization of European urban networks. Her publications include The Road to Constantinople: The Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Towns Through Christian Eyes (2002; and 2004 in Czech), as well as many articles on problems of urban innovations, modernity and backwardness. Her current interest is in the role of history in the creation of regional and urban identities.

Karel Kubiš

is an Assistant Professor of History at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague, where he also took his degrees. He co-edited “Meeting the Other” Studies in Comparative History, pro Studia Historica LVI, AUC, Philosophica et Historica 2/2003, Prague 2007. His research interests are focused on conflicts of modernity and traditions in European economic thought and on historical perspectives of European integration.

Božena Radiměřská

received her MA degree in History at Charles University in Prague in 2007, with a thesis entitled Trans-Rhenic Europe on the Mental Map of a 17th century English Traveller. She is currently a doctoral student of General History at the same institution. Her research interests include early modern travel writing and discourse of travel, mental mapping concepts, and cultural frontiers within Europe in the early modern period.

Stahování

Publikováno

2010-07-01

Jak citovat

Klusáková, L., Kubiš, K., & Radiměřská, B. (2010). The Roles of the City in the Books of CLIOHRES. Lidé města, 12(2), 219-247. https://doi.org/10.14712/12128112.3606

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