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Uneasy Neighbours?: Rural-Urban Relationships in the Nineteenth Century
An International Interdisciplinary Conference
University of
Southampton
Centre for
19th-Century Research
20 September 2013
Keynote Speaker:
Keith D.M. Snell, Professor of Rural and Cultural History, University of
Leicester
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 living 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 different contexts.
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; the lives of children;
philanthropy; the greening of the city (garden cities); industrialisation of
the countryside.
Abstracts (200 words) for proposed 20 minute papers to be
submitted by e-mail to W.B.Sloan@soton.ac.uk
and E.M.Hammond@soton.ac.uk
by 28 February 2013.
Registration: £30 (£20 students and unwaged)
