IMC 2007: Sessions

Session 217: Constructing Cities: Text, Imagination, Material Remains and History, II - Southern Europe

Monday 9 July 2007, 14.15-15.45

Sponsor:	German Historical Institute, Washington DC
Organiser:	Barbara H. Rosenwein, Department of History, Loyola University Chicago
Moderator/Chair:	Felicitas Schmieder, Historisches Institut, FernUniversität Hagen
Paper 217-a	The Self-Image of the Aristocracy in 8th-Century Rome (Language: English) Florian Hartmann, Deutsches Historisches Institut, Roma Index terms: Archaeology - Sites, Economics - Urban, Historiography - Medieval
Paper 217-b	Death and Memory: Constructing Florentine Communal Identity in Late Trecento Rome (Language: English) Alizah Holstein, Boston College, Massachusetts Index terms: Economics - Urban, Social History
Paper 217-c	Hec civitas in medio infidelium et hereticorum stetit: The image of Ragusa as the Defender of Christendom (14-16th Centuries) (Language: English) Lovro Kuncevic, Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest Index terms: Local History, Mentalities
Abstract	This is the second of two sessions. It concentrates on Southern Europe, while the first focuses on the North, since it is commonly assumed that the cities of the North and South differed in development in important ways. Cities are not only spatial units confined by physical frontiers but also imagined virtual spaces. Both the self-image of an urban community and the perception of its past are vital to the unity and development of cities. The subject of this session is how Southern European cities fashioned themselves. It looks at their material culture and asks how urban communities perceived and shaped their past for the present. The two sessions taken together will shed light on the differences and the surprising similarities involved in the 'construction of cities'.