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SmallerSMALL CITIES CONFERENCE
The Small City in Global Context
April 12-14, 2007
The fifth Small Cities Conference, sponsored by the Center for Middletown Studies at Ball State University, aims to explore the history of non-metropolitan urban settings during the early-modern and modern eras. It features scholars whose work has in some way dealt with the history of small cities in various parts of the world and provides them with an opportunity to compare approaches, methods, and sources. The purpose of the conference is to define the history of small cities and secondary urban centers as a distinctive subject of inquiry within the larger field of urban studies.The mission of the Center for Middletown Studies is to build on the research inaugurated in Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture (1929), Robert and Helen Lynd's seminal account of culture and society in Muncie, Indiana during the 1920s. Middletown was the result of a "small city study" commissioned by the Institute for Social and Religious Research. Both the Lynds themselves and other scholars returned to Muncie over the course of the twentieth century to measure social change and the Center has actively supported and promoted this line of research. It has also broadened its scope by sponsoring and promoting research and periodic conferences on small cities in the United States, thereby building on the Institute's original idea of a small city study.
This conference widens the Center's work on small cities by placing them in a global context. The papers to be presented examine communities in the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin American that occupied secondary and tertiary positions within urban networks. They also range widely in chronological terms, covering both the early modern and modern eras. Despite these vast differences of time and place, the cities considered in the conference share common ground. They are all communities that have both responded to economic, cultural, and political developments emanating from metropolitan centers and contributed to the development of those centers. It is this experience that distinguishes them from larger cities and it is this experience that the conference explores.
Conference presenters include David Goldfield, University of North Carolina-Charlotte (editor of The Journal of Urban History); Stewart Gordon, University of Michigan; John Chaffee, Binghamton University; James Heitzmann, University of California-Davis; Carola Hein, Bryn Mawr College; John Whitmore, University of Michigan; Timothy Mahoney, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Alan Lessoff, Illinois State University; Elizabeth Lambourn, De Montfort University (Leicester, UK); Geoffrey Nwaka, Abia State University (Nigeria); and Jay Spaulding, Kean University.
For additional information, please visit www.bsu.edu/middletown or contact:
James J. Connolly, Director
Center for Middletown Studies
206 Bracken Library
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306
Phone: (765) 285-8037
Fax: (765) 285-3571
E-mail: jconnoll@bsu.edu
Session Titles and Participants
Sessions will take place from April 12th-14th, 2007 at Bracken Library on the Ball State University campus and the E.B. and Bertha Ball Center, 400 N. Minnetrista Boulevard, Muncie, Indiana (telephone: 285-8975).
Thursday, April 12, 2007
7:30-9:00PM
Forum Room (225), Bracken Library, Ball State University
Timothy Mahoney, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, "Digital History and the Small City: The Plains Gilded Age City Digital Project."
Moderator/Commentator: Professor E. Bruce Geelhoed, Ball State University
(This session is free and open to the public. Free Parking is available in the Emens Garage, immediately east of Bracken Library)
Friday, April 13, 2007
(All Friday and Saturday sessions will take place at the E. B. Ball Center, 400 N. Minnetrista Boulevard, Muncie, Indiana.)
Registration/Continental Breakfast: 7:30-8:00 AM (Registration continues through 4 PM.)
Session 1: 8:00-9:30 AM
Urban Networks in Islamic Southeast Asia
Panelists:
Elizabeth Lambourn, De Montfort University, "What's in a Tombstone: Gravestones and Network Analysis in Early Islamic Southeast Asia"
Kenneth Hall, Ball State University, "Coastal Cities in an Age of Transition: Upstream-Downstream Networking and Societal Development in 15th- and 16th-Century Maritime Southeast Asia"
Chair/Comment: Alexandra Green, Denison University
Session 2: 9:45-11:15 AM
Commerce and Power in Early Modern East Asian Cities
Panelists:
John Chaffee, University of Binghamton, "At the Intersection of Empire and World Trade: the Port City of Quanzhou, 1000-1400"
John Whitmore, University of Michigan, "The Secondary Capitals of Dai Viet: Shifting Elite Power Bases"
Charles Wheeler, University of California-Irvine, "From Abundant Frontier to Poor Center: Ecological, Macroeconomic, and Demographic Change in Central Vietnam, 15-20th Centuries"
Chair/Comment: Kenneth Swope, Ball State University
Luncheon: 11:30 AM-12:30 PM
Session 3: 12:30-2:00 PM
Working-Class Activism in the Industrializing Small City
Panelists:
Robert Hall, Ball State University, "Citizens of the World: Labor, Democracy, and Plebian Intellectuals in Ashton-under-Lyne, 1830-1870"
Steve Leiken, San Francisco State University, "Cooperation and Community: Working-Class Strategies for Change in Two Gilded Age Cities"
Chair/Comment: Richard Schneirov, Indiana State University
Comment: John Bohstedt, University of Tennessee
Session 4: 2:15-3:45 PM
Growth and Change in Nineteenth-Century Port Cities
Panelists:
Samuel Martland, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, "Trade, Progress, and Patriotism: Defining Valparaiso, Chile, 1818-1875"
Dieter Buse, Laurentian University, "Encountering and Resolving Small City Problems: 19th Century Bremen"
Chair/Comment: David T. Murphy, Anderson University
Session 5: 4:00-5:30 PM
Urban Identity in Twentieth-Century Europe
Panelists:
Eric Reed, Western Kentucky University, "Postwar Culture, the European Community, and International Marketing in Two French Middle Towns: The Tour de France in Strasbourg and Brest"
Micheline Nilsen, Indiana University-South Bend, "Namur as Provincial Capital of Wallonia: Looks, Luck or Location?"
Chair/Comment: Christopher Thompson, Ball State University
Saturday April 14, 2007
Registration/Continental Breakfast: 7:30-8:00AM (Registration continues through lunch.)
Session 6: 8:00-9:30 AM
Small Cities on the Ottoman Periphery
Panelists:
Jay S. Spaulding, Kean University, "Suakin: A Small City of the Early Modern Sudan"
Charles Argo, Ball State University, "The Ottoman Balkan City: The Periphery as Center in Punitive Spectacle"
Chair/Comment: Stephen Morillo, Wabash University
Session 7: 9:45-11:15 AM
U.S. Small Cities in the Age of Globalization
Panelists:
Alan Lessoff, Illinois State University, "The Search for a New Direction in Corpus Christi, Texas, 1970-Present"
Himanee Gupta-Carlson, University of Hawaii-Manoa, "Diaspora and Home: Muncie's South Asian Community in a Global Context"
Chair/Comment: Janet Bednarek, University of Dayton
Luncheon: 11:30 AM-12:30 PM
Session 8: 12:30-2:00 PM
The Small City in the U.S. South
Panelist:
David Goldfield, University of North Carolina-Charlotte, "Dying to Live: The Reinvention of Southern Town Life"
Chair/Comment: Eric Sandweiss, Indiana University
Session 9: 2:15-3:45 PM
Patterns of Urban Development in South Asia
Panelists:
Stewart Gordon: University of Michigan: "Small Cities as Nodal Points in Pre-Colonial India"
James Heitzmann, University of California-Davis: "Secondary Cities in South
Asia in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Patterns and Case Studies"
Chair/Comment: Abel Alves, Ball State University
Session 10: 4:00-5:30 PM
Conceiving Secondary Cities in Asia and Africa
Panelists:
Geoffrey Nkawa, Abbia State University, Nigeria, "Using Medium and Small Towns to Strengthen Urban-Rural Linkages in Nigeria"
Christopher Airries, Ball State University "In the Shadow of Giants: The Geographies of Secondary City Growth in a Globalized China"
Carola Hein, Bryn Mawr College, "Machi: The Small Town or Neighborhood Concept at the Heart of Japanese Urban Space"
Chair/Comment: J. Douglas Nelson, Anderson University
Registration
Name __________________________________________________________
Affiliation _______________________________________________________
Mailing Address __________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
City ______________________ State ________ ZIP _____________________
Phone (_____) ___________________________________________________
Fax (_____) _____________________________________________________
Email ___________________________________________________________
Preregistration fee is $40, which includes attendance at all sessions, refreshments, and breakfast and lunch each day. Registration is due March 30, 2007. The Registration charge after March 30 is $50 for the conference and $30 for a single-day registration. Checks should be made payable to Ball State University.
Ball State University Students and Faculty (including emeriti) may attend the sessions at no charge but purchase a separate ticket for lunch ($10 for one day; $20 for two), if they choose.
Preregistation $40
Single-day registration $30
Friday lunch (BSU affiliated) $10
Saturday lunch (BSU affiliated) $10
Total Amount Included: ____
Send completed for with payment to:
James Connolly
Small Cities Conference
Center for Middletown Studies
Ball State University
2000 W. University Ave.
Muncie, IN 47306
Muncie Accomodations
The Center for Middletown Studies has reserved blocks of rooms at the hotels listed below. All hotels listed are a short drive from the E.B. Ball Center and the BSU campus. Please identify yourself as attending the Small Cities Conference when you make reservations. Reservations must be made by March 9, 2007 to ensure rooms and rates. Conference attendees are encouraged to make lodging reservations as soon as possible.
Fairfield Inn Muncie
4011 W. Bethel Ave.
Muncie, Indiana 47305
765-282-6666
Days Inn Muncie
3509 N. Everbrook Lane
Muncie, Indiana 47304
765-288-2311
Super 8 Motel Muncie
3801 W. Fox Ridge Lane
Muncie, IN 47304
765-286-4333
