RHN 77/2026 | Call
Organisers: Maria Pia Ester Cristaldi (Üsküdar University) and Elisa Ramazzina (University of Insubria)
Entangled Histories Seminar Series 2026–2027
Deadline for Submissions: 31 August 2026
Call for Papers:
Borders and Sustainability. Human and Natural Resources across Time and Space
Entangled Histories Seminar Series 2026–2027
The Entangled Histories Seminar Series invites abstracts for its 2026–2027 cycle, specifically focused on rural and agricultural history. We seek contributions that examine the history of human interaction with the land—from Prehistory and Antiquity, through the Middle Ages and the Early Modern era, to the Modern and Contemporary periods—through a rigorous diachronic perspective.
This series explores sustainability as a relational process. We investigate how rural societies have negotiated ecological limits, managed vital agricultural resources, and facilitated the circulation of knowledge across physical and social borders. We welcome proposals that analyse the rural landscape as a critical archive of human history, resilience, and environmental memory.
Core Research Domains for Rural and Agricultural History:
- The Materiality of Agrarian Resilience: The history of reuse, rewriting, and adaptation in rural environments. From prehistoric field systems and the archaeological record of ancient farmsteads to the recycling of agricultural technologies (palimpsests of cultivation) and the preservation of material heritage in rural settings.
- Elemental Theory and Rural Imaginaries: The four classical elements (Earth, Water, Air, Fire) as fundamental frameworks for agricultural life. How have climatic shocks, environmental limits, and natural resources been encoded in agrarian folklore, cosmographies, maps, and artistic representations of the "countryside" throughout history?
- Circulation of Knowledge, Traditions, and Food: The "living memory" of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), medical practices, and botanical wisdom associated with rural life. We focus on the movement of crops, agricultural techniques, and food systems as vehicles for maintaining cultural and agrarian sustainability across borders.
- Languages, Literatures, and Symbolic Landscapes: The role of heritage languages, minority languages, and regional literature in preserving the memory of rural spatial perceptions, sacred groves/sites, and environmental heritage. How has the rural landscape been represented in literature?
- Resilience, Folklore, and Local History: The use of folklore, rituals, and local history to document adaptation to systemic shocks. We invite studies on how rural communities have documented their response to environmental and social crises—such as droughts, famine, or political transitions—through communal practices.
Topics of Interest (Interdisciplinary Perspectives)
- Archaeology and Anthropology: Settlement archaeology, archeoastronomy of agricultural sites, ethnographic records of agrarian change, and the material trace of long-term environmental adaptation.
- Manuscript Studies, Philology, and Linguistics: The physical record of textual memory (farm diaries, cadastral maps), the preservation of minority/heritage languages of the field, and the literary representation of the land.
- History of Science, Medicine, and Technology: The material culture of farming (tools and machinery), the preservation of traditional healing knowledge, and the history of agricultural technology as a component of sustainability.
- Art History, Architecture, and Visual Culture: The "biography" of rural landscapes, the history of agrarian art, and the symbolic representation of borders and sustainability in the built environment of the farm.
- Geography, Cartography, and Media Studies: The mapping of rural spaces—how spatial representations communicate environmental and agricultural history across cultural borders.
Conceptual Framework Sustainability is framed here as a relational and memorial process. We explore how human groups have remembered their interactions with the land and with each other, using the Four Elements as a heuristic to bridge diverse historical strata across rural history.
Submission Guidelines & Selection Rules
- Format: Online seminar via Zoom (Approx. 30-minute presentation).
- Proposals must include: Title, Abstract (250–300 words), Bio (100–150 words), Affiliation, and Preferred months of availability.
MANDATORY ABSTRACT CRITERIA: The abstract submitted MUST clearly explain how the proposed paper intends to address and integrate the central core topics of the series: Borders and Sustainability within a historical, medical, or anthropological framework. Proposals that fail to explicitly address this conceptual intersection will not be considered.
CRITICAL SUBMISSION REQUIREMENT: All submission materials (title, abstract explaining the approach to borders and sustainability, bio, affiliation, and availability) MUST be compiled and submitted into a SINGLE file (.doc, .docx, or .pdf). Multiple attachments will not be considered.
Please submit your single-file proposal to: entangledhistories.seminars [@] outlook.com
Important Dates
- Deadline for abstracts: 31 August 2026
- Notification of acceptance: By 30 September 2026
Publication Opportunity A selection of the most significant contributions will be published in a special issue or in a dedicated edited volume with a major, world-leading academic publisher.
Contact Information
- Organised by: Dr Maria Pia Ester Cristaldi (Üsküdar University), Dr Elisa Ramazzina (University of Insubria)
- Under the patronage of: The Faculty of Communication and the Master’s Programme in Media and Cultural Studies at Üsküdar University.