Call for Participants
Late September/early October 2022
What are the stories of a motorway or railway, a bridge or underpass, an airport or dockyard? What led to their construction, how are they understood, and how have they been represented in culture? Which narratives have they made possible, and which have they obscured?
‘Infrastructural Narratives’ is interested in precisely these questions. It examines how the spaces and experiences created by infrastructural development, principally but not exclusively in cities, have shaped, determined or otherwise affected the production of narrative and identity in the contemporary period.
It seems almost to go without saying that the advent of train travel, the construction of the first motorways, or the building of the first airports, changed life and experience in fundamental ways. ‘Infrastructural Narratives’ aims to shed light on how this has taken place. From flight paths to supply chains to shipping lanes, it is interested in the contemporary afterlives of older spaces as well as the advent of new ones, and aims to connect the study of culture with that of the built environment.
In partnership with the Raphael Samuel History Centre, the workshop will include presentations of work by Dr David Anderson (QMUL) and Dr Peter TA Jones (OU) and their collaborations with artists Bella Marrin and David Fletcher on the M25 Orbital Motorway and the railway arches of London. Dr Siyi Li (CUHK) will also share his research on the construction of railways and national identity in twentieth-century China.
If the theme of the workshop chimes with your research, then we would like you to be part of it! The workshop is supported by funding from the British Academy, and we hope that it will mark the start of a larger project that develops connections between the study of culture and the built environment.
Please contact David Anderson (david.anderson@qmul.ac.uk) with the subject line ‘Infrastructural Narratives’, giving a brief outline/abstract of your work, and we will be in touch.