Southampton Centre for Nineteenth-Century Research, University of Southampton

The relationship between urban and rural communities in the nineteenth century was increasingly strained by the unprecedented rate and scale of social, industrial, technological and economic change worldwide.  Cities demanded ever more from agriculture, while rural populations decreased; country life and work were changed by mechanisation and industrialisation, while newcomers to the cities had to adjust to alien ways of livings and conditions of employment; poverty was commonplace in both the countryside and the cities, while the newly wealthy became landowners and urban leaders.

This 1-day interdisciplinary conference aims to consider evidence of the tensions, anxieties and experiences resulting from the changing dynamic between rural and urban life, to examine how this shaped the perceptions of the country and the city, and to explore how these are articulated in difference contexts.

Call for papers

Suggested topics might include (but are not limited to):

The rival attractions of rural and urban living; the rise of the suburb; changing ideals of national identity; representations of rural and urban life and work in art and science; women's lives and work in the country and city; rural and urban health/wealth/poverty; utopianism; urban/rural perspectives in the contemporary press; the role and influence of religion; landowners as businessmen and entrepreneurs; lives of children; philanthropy; the greening of the city (garden cities); industrialiation of the countryside.

Abstracts (200 words) for proposed 20 minute papers to be submitted by email to Barry Sloan (w.b.sloan@southampton.ac.uk) and Mary Hammond (e.m.hammond@southampton.ac.uk) by 2 April 2013.

Papers are invited FROM and ON any geographical location, and from any discipline. An academic publisher has expressed interest in the possibility of an edited collection deriving from the conference.