Please consider submitting your proposal to the PAMLA 2023 panel “A Leap Over: Formation and Dissolution of Urban Boundaries”.

The city images reveal the stratification of shared cultural meanings of the urban space over time. This space is an expression and reflection of local identity formation and dynamics. The intricate network of the actions of cities’ inhabitants is constantly conditioned by the cultural and spatial constraints of urban limits. However, in the contemporary world, the concept of “urban limit” should be seriously questioned. The boundaries of cities today have faded, and the urban frontiers are areas of opacity, constantly mobile, and undefined. The very notion of the city, as a completed organism, is continually questioned, to the extent that it can be argued that cities do not exist: there are only different forms of urban life. Therefore, the physical, social, and cultural separations that have historically distinguished the urban from the non-urban seem to have shifted: they are no longer on the “edge” of the city but inside it.

Amidst the incredibly rapid dynamism of urban growth - and the consequent formation and dissolution of forms of borders within the urban space - this panel aims to explore how literature, cinema, media, and visual cultures suggest new interpretative perspectives and offer new possibilities for overcoming the dynamics of urban confinement, adopting a wide-lens interdisciplinary approach.

Please submit your abstract online at this link: https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/Home/S/18861 

Format:

• Abstract - 50 words
• Proposal - 250-500 words
• Title - no longer than 120 characters

Acceptance notification will be sent by June 11, 2023. 

PAMLA Presenter Policies can be found at this link: https://www.pamla.org/conference/policies-and-procedures/

For any questions, please contact the panel chairs: Daniele Santucci (santucci2@wisc.edu) and Giampaolo Molisina (molisina@wisc.edu)