Open Cities Public Seminar
Public Seminar
Wednesday, 10 October, 3-5pm
FREE, All welcome
UTS Building 2, Room 7.065
As part of the OPEN CITIES: Urban Citizenship in Berlin and Sydney project, Transforming Cultures Research Centre is pleased to host this public seminar.
Speakers: Mark Stein (Universitaet Muenster), Anja Schwarz (Free University, Berlin) and Fiona Allon (UWS)
Discussant: Katrina Schlunke
The openness of contemporary cities challenges the closed territorial borders of the nation-state. Increasingly the culturally diverse metropolis provides a space for forms of citizenship and belonging that diverge considerably from national identity and formal citizenship. The heterogeneity of the city can become a basis for new forms of cultural and political mobilisation, as urban subjects normally excluded from the national imagination make their presence felt in very concrete ways. This seminar explores how a notion of urban citizenship can be used as a conceptual tool for understanding reconfigurations of identity and belonging that are frequently at odds with wider processes of nation building. Each speaker will present case studies from Berlin and Sydney in order to explore the emerging dimensions of an urban cultural citizenship that undermines traditional ideas of nationhood by affirming new public cultures and transnational urban identities.
This project has been undertaken with support from the ARC's International Linkage Scheme.
