CALL FOR PAPERS vol. 11 n. 24 (4th quarter 2025)

Description

Cities have been affected by warfare ever since they first came into being in the earliest periods of history; however, the armed conflicts and combat decisions of belligerent forces have caused considerably greater damage since the start of the nineteenth century, and in particular since the 1936–1939 War in Spain and the Second World War. When weapon systems, initially designed for army engagements in open spaces, began to be used against populated areas, especially cities, the consequences for the civilian population were devastating. They changed the way people lived in the city and continue to do so today. We saw it less than fifty years ago in the hostilities during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s and we are seeing it today in Ukraine and Gaza. Their effects are indiscriminate and place civilians at risk of death, injury, homelessness and displacement. In 2011, the International Committee of the Red Cross declared that explosive weapons with a wide area of impact should not be used in densely populated areas due to their indiscriminate effects; and in February 2015 it convened a meeting of experts on the subject in response to the increasing urbanisation of warfare.

 

General aim

In this call we invite submissions from a range of disciplines and perspectives that analyse and study the culture of cities in contemporary era warfare and the consequences of these wars. We aim to contribute to a reflection on how people function in cities during wars, to examine their responses to the consequences of war, and how wars change the way of life of urban populations.

 

Thematic lines

• The culture of warfare in cities.
• The links between cities and militarism as a result of wars.
• Passive defence and the changing way of life in the city.
• Photographic, cinematographic, artistic and literary testimonies of the urban devastation of war.
• War damage in cities and post-war reconstruction.
• Damage to Spanish cities of the 1936-39 war.
• Second World War devastation in European cities.
• The carnage of war in the cities of the former Yugoslavia.
• The devastation of the war in Ukrainian cities.

The catastrophe of Israeli and Palestinian wars in cities