Programme-sponsored conference sessions
RGS-IBG Annual Conference 2009
'Narrating Landscape and Environment'
Session convenors: Stephen Daniels and Hayden Lorimer
Co-sponsors: Historical Geography Research Group, RGS-IBG
Location: University of Manchester
This session sought to re-appraise narrative as way of shaping and arranging manifold understandings of landscape and environment, both in language and in image. It asked: 'how do we story our worlds into shape?', and invited different kinds of response.
The session sought research presentations that:
- address matters of temporality and history in the unfolding of landscape and environment, or the placing of processes and movement, or the personification of livelihoods and identities, or the chronicling of the seen and unseen.
- consider the deployment of narrative in factual histories of landscape and environment, or its styling in map-making, or narrative configurations in the imaginative worlds of lore and reverie
- comment on the scale(s) at which stories of landscape and environment are projected
- recall expressive formations of landscape and environment in oral traditions and storytelling
- explore the potential for narrative in widening participation in debates on the making, meanings and changing uses of landscape and environment
- unravel the landscaping of narrative, by considering how a geographical perspective can contribute to broader questions of power and knowledge in narratology
- deploy narrative as a rhythmic and expressive style, as well as the object of research and analysis
- consider the authority given to (self) experience in narrative accounts of landscape and environment
- chart new terrains for critique, and prospects for novel dialogue, in narrative-led accounts of landscape and environment
Narrative experiments and creative methods in different forms (and audio-visual formats) were also welcome.
The following Landscape and Environment Programme projects were represented: Changing landscapes, enclosure and culture in Northamptonshire, Empire and Landscape in the long 18th century, Landscape, people and parks, Tales of the frontier, and The Indian Ocean.
Session abstracts
RGS-IBG Annual Conference 2008
'Diaspora Landscapes'
Session convenors: Stephen Daniels, Alison Blunt and Kim Knott
Co-sponsors: AHRC Disaporas, Migration and Identity Programme
Location: RGS, London
Ideas and experiences of landscape and diaspora are closely intertwined. Situated within broader debates about place and displacement, location and mobility, this session explored the material and imaginative geographies of diaspora landscapes and the ways in which they reflect and influence migratory cultures, politics, identities and practices. Diaspora landscapes range across different forms, contexts and locations and include landscapes of diasporic memory, attachment and belonging; experiences of everyday landscapes in diaspora; imaginative landscapes in diasporic art, literature and material culture; embodied and sensory landscapes in diaspora; and the effects of migration on landscape change at sites of departure, resettlement and return. Exploring both proximate and more distant landscapes on scales from the home, neighbourhood and city to the nation, homeland, and diaspora itself, the session reflected on the importance of landscape in relation to diasporic identities and connections over space, time and across different generations.
Key themes included:
- diasporic landscapes of home and homeland
- diasporic landscapes of departure, settlement and return
- rural and urban landscapes in diaspora
- diaspora and the built environment
- secular and sacred diaspora landscapes
- sensory landscapes of diasporic attachment and belonging
- representations of diaspora landscapes in art, literature and material culture
- the politics of diaspora landscapes.
The following Landscape and Environment Programme projects were represented: Tales of the frontier.
Session abstracts
RGS-IBG Annual Conference 2007
'Liquid Landscapes'
Session convenors: Stephen Daniels and Mike Pearson
Co-sponsors: Historical Geography Research Group, RGS
Location: RGS, London
This session explored cultural and imaginative relations between landscape and liquidity in a range of places. It focused on physical sites and spaces and forms and processes of representation, and addressed exchanges between material and metaphorical aspects of liquid landscape. The session covered a variety of contact zones between land and water, including riverbanks, shorelines, coastal highways, cliff-faces and fens. Various forms of human experience and imagination in these liquid landscapes were addressed, from engineering to art practise. Modes of representation considered included film making, installation, performance and easel painting. The implications of liquidity for larger issues of landscape design and aesthetics were also considered.
The following Landscape and Environment Programme projects were represented: A transforming landscape of journeys, Carrlands, Land art and the culture of landscape, Liquid city, and Re-enchantment and Reclamation.
Session abstracts