Symposium on 19C Global Cities and Urban Worlds Concludes

In conjunction with TELEMMe (Temps, espaces, langages, Europe méridionale, Méditerranée) and the Institut de recherches asiatiques at Aix-Marseille University, the Society for Global Nineteenth-Century Studies held an international symposium on “Nineteenth-Century Global Cities and Urban Worlds” from 6 to 8 June 2024. Our symposia are designed to bring together a smaller number of researchers than our congresses who are actively working on a given topic for intellectual interchange and enhanced networking. The gathering included historians, art historians, literary scholars, musicologists, public health researchers, and sociologists, among others, whose papers were assembled into twelve panels ranging from the themes of “Literature, Song, and the Urban Experience” to “Religious Communities and Urban Life.”

The symposium was organized on behalf of the SGNCS by Eldra-Dominique WALKER (University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA), Irena VLADIMIRSKY (Achva Academic College, Israel), and Nicole DAVIS (University of Melbourne, Australia) with Kevin A. Morrison (Henan University), SGNCS President, and Chong Xu (Soochow University) serving as co-chairs of the program committee. Attendees were welcomed by Morrison and Xu as well as Christian Henriot (Aix-Marseille University), who served as our host.

Kevin A. Morrison (Henan University), SGNCS President; Chong Xu (Soochow University); and Christian Henriot (Aix-Marseille University)

In addition to a wide array of papers, there were three stimulating plenary sessions, including a paper by Susan Zieger (University of California, Riverside, USA) on “The City, The Warehouse, and the Power of Logistics”; Michael GOEBEL (Freie Universität, Germany) on “Picayune Capitalists: Atlantic Inequalities, Race, and Real Estate in Nineteenth-Century Buenos Aires”; and Patrick Le Galès (Sciences Po, France) on “World Cities, Global Cities, Globalizing Cities.”

Susan Zieger (University of California, Riverside, USA), “The City, The Warehouse, and the Power of Logistics”

Michael GOEBEL (Freie Universität, Germany), “Picayune Capitalists: Atlantic Inequalities, Race, and Real Estate in Nineteenth-Century Buenos Aires”

Patrick Le Galès (Sciences Po, France), “World Cities, Global Cities, Globalizing Cities”

Virtual Panel

Chair: Chong XU (Soochow University, China)

Münevver HATIPOĞLU (Boğaziçi University, Türkiye), Ottoman Capital During the Balkan

Crisis of 1875-1878: Relief, Mobilization and the City

Nikos POTAMIANOS (Institute for Mediterranean Studies – FORTH, Greece), International

cultural transfers in the 19th century Eastern Mediterranean cities: the carnival in Athens and Izmir

Christopher FERGUSON (Auburn University, USA), The City as Ocean in the Nineteenth

Century

Jordan HILLMAN (Bruce Museum, USA), From the Street to the Sheet: Policing Paris in Print

Münevver HATIPOĞLU (Boğaziçi University, Türkiye)

Panel 1: Women in Cities 

Chair: Michael PEPLAR (Northeastern University - London, UK)

Lee MICHAEL-BERGER (Beit-Berl College, Israel), Abortion, Women and the Urban in late

nineteenth century London

Camille STALLINGS (University of Oxford, UK), Outside the Metropole: Ladies' Clubs

and Women’s Rights in British India

Lindsay E. SHANNON (North Central College, USA), Expatriate Female Artists’ Networks in

Nineteenth-Century Rome

Panel 2: Religious Communities and Urban Life

Chair: Robert Aleksander MARYKS (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland)

Asya KURTULDU (Freie Universität, Germany), The Israel's Messenger: Creating a Minority

Identity in Turn of the Century Shanghai

Irena VLADIMIRSKY (Achva Academic College, Israel), Jewish community of Harbin:

Practices of Adaptation to Three Different Imperial Patterns (1898-1941)

Rebecca CIATTINI (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy), Poetic Echoes in an Urban Space:

Architecture, Literature, and Society in Nineteenth-Century Kermānšāh

Panel 3: Literature, Song, and the Urban Experience

Chair: Maïté MARCIANO (Centre College, USA),

Suzy ANGER (University of British Columbia, Canada), Dyspepsia, the Mind, and the City in

the Nineteenth Century

Tereza BRALA (University of Trier, Germany), The Influence of Urban Environments on

Individuals in Late Nineteenth Century Poetry

Lucinda JANSON (Queen Mary University of London, UK), ‘Oh, London dear!’: Belated

Decadence and the Queer City in Ronald Firbank’s Vainglory and Caprice

K. Adele OKOLI (University of Central Arkansas USA), Creolizing La Marseillaise:

Transatlantic Soundscapes of Love and War

Panel 4:  Litigation and Legitimation: Customs, Copyright, and Moving Texts in

Nineteenth-Century Cities

Chair: Sonia Di LORETO (Università di Torino, Italy)

Andrew WILDERMUTH (Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany), A Tale Twice Told: Law,

Sovereignty, and Changing Boston in Apess’s Nullification (1835) and Hawthorne’s “The

Custom-House” (1850)

Alice de GALZAIN (Independent Scholar), George Sand and the City of Paris: Transnational

and Translational Feminist Acts in The Una (1853–1855)

Elena FURLANETTO (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany), How to Get Away with Race:

Victor Séjour and the 1830 Louisiana Censorship Law

Sonia Di LORETO (Università di Torino, Italy), In a Province Far Far Away: Print

Provincialism, Censorship, and Translation. Rome 1849

Panel 5: Urban Flows and Mobilities

Chair: Chong XU (Soochow University, China)

John D. BELSHAW (Thompson Rivers University, Canada), Velo Cities and Urban Wheels:

Cyclists and the emergence of Vancouver, Canada, 1865-1900

Patricia GARCIA (Universidad de Alcalá, Spain), Train Networks, Tram Mazes and Ghost

Passengers: The Uncanny Expansion of Urban Transportation in the Nineteen-Century

Literary Fantastic

Joshua PARKER (University of Salzburg, Austria), “Watson come here I want you”: The Folk

Physics of Early Energy, Transportation, and Telecommunications Inventors

Panel 6: Objects, Images, Ephemera

Chair: Lucie PROHIN (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France),

Catherine STUER (Denison University, USA), Global photography and the city in nineteenth-

century China

Isabelle HAVET (University of Delaware & Linn-Benton Community College, USA), The Paris

Sewers and the Construction of the Sanitized City

Ronan Patrick MCGREECHIN (University of Stirling, UK), How Culture, Leisure and

Recreation is presented in the The Arkivz, Denny Brother’s Drawing Office Scrapbook

Lucie CHOPARD (Aix-Marseille Université, France), Circulation, art and knowledge: meeting

places of the Parisian art market of Asian art (1870- 1900)

Panel 7: Transforming Environments

Chair: Isabelle HAVET (University of Delaware & Linn-Benton Community College, USA),

Gala Maria FOLLACO (Università di Napoli L’Orientale, Italy), Records of a Westernizing

Capital: Tōkyō shin hanjōki

Esra SERT (MEF University, Türkiye), Metabolic Shifts and Uneven Geographies: A Critical

Examination of Late 19th-Century Istanbul’s Urban Transformation

Vikram BHARDWAJ (Himachal Pradesh University, India), Legacy of Empire: Exploring

Shimla’s Colonial Urban Identity

Sergio Pinto HANDLER (Marist College, USA), The Last Emancipation: Radical Abolitionism

and the Politics of Slavery and Freedom in Rio de Janeiro, 1880-1910

Panel 8: Port Cities

Chair: Irena VLADIMIRSKY (Achva Academic College, Israel)

Maïté MARCIANO (Centre College, USA), Marseille and the Making of a Global South City:

Port Expansion, Cosmopolitanism, and the Reimagining of 19th-Century French Modernity

Joshua EHRLICH (University of Macau, SAR China), Port City Book Bazaars and the Growth

of an Indian Print Community

Felicitas REMER (Freie Universität, Germany), Late Ottoman Jaffa, a Minor Eastern

Mediterranean Port City in the “Age of Steam”: Globalization, Migration, and New Urban Boundaries

Tri TRAN (University of Tours, France), The Port of London, Hub of the British Empire? Trade

Companies and the Making of a Global Commercial Hub, 1799-1914

Panel 9: Urban Institutions

Chair: Camille STALLINGS (University of Oxford, UK)

Lucie TOUZOT (University of Tours, France), A transatlantic Tale of Two Tea Cities: exporting

the Glasgow Tearoom to New York

Michael PEPLAR (Northeastern University London, UK), Placing Hoxton Hall in Historical

Context: East London, Music Hall and Modern Urban Popular Culture

Stephanie WEBER (Independent scholar), Spaces of Spectacles: Representations of 19th Century

Sideshows and P.T. Barnum’s American Museum in Ellen Bryson’s The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno and Steven Millhauser’s The Barnum Museum

Panel 10: Urban Strategies and Counter-Narratives: The Jesuit Influence and Its Opposition in Cityscape Evolution

Chair: Robert Aleksander MARYKS (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland)

Robert Aleksander MARYKS (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland), Landmarking: An

Exploration of the Jesuit Order’s Urban Strategy

Michał E. NOWAKOWSKI (The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland), Cities as

Nests of Jesuit Snakes: The Origins of the Urban Motif in the Nineteenth-Century Anti-

Jesuit Literature

Przemysław Marcin RACZYK (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland), Cityscapes of Dissent:

The Role of Vilnius and Paris in Shaping Polish Anti-Jesuitism in the Late 18th and 19th Centuries

Panel 11: Managing Public Health

Chair: Kevin A. Morrison (Henan University, China)

Nicolo Paolo P LUDOVICE (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, SAR China),

Building Urban Resilience through Epizootics in Colonial Manila

Amit KESTENBAUM (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel), From Marginalized Figure to

Modern Urban Type: Reevaluating the Urban Experience in the Modern City

Jennifer ADAIR (Fairfield University, USA), Trashed: The Politics of Waste in Buenos Aires,

1880-1930

Panel 12: City as Spectacle, Symbol, and Object of Consumption

Chair: Tri TRAN (University of Tours, France)

Lucie PROHIN (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France), Workers’ Dwellings at World’s

Fairs: The Urban Spectacle as Vehicle of Transnational and Translocal Exchange

María José JARRIN (Aix-Marseille Université, France), The Paris World Fairs and the

Construction of Ecuador at Global Level (1855-1900)

Chong XU (Soochow University, China), Discovering ‘Paradise on Earth’: Travel Guides of

Western Travellers to Suzhou and Hangzhou from the Late 19th Century to Early 20th Century

Ann Kristine ERIKSEN (European University Institute, Italy), Producing an Urban Aesthetic:

Understanding the Role of New Visual Media and Picture Printing in the Nineteenth Century Urban Image