This CFP is from: https://www.rsa.org/blogpost/2016688/473211/Early-Modern-Infrastructure
Early Modern Infrastructure
Early modern infrastructure formed a connective tissue between built and natural environments and the societies that used and exploited them. “Infrastructures,” as Brian Larkin defines them, “are built networks that facilitate the flow of goods, people, or ideas and allow for their exchange over space.” By early modern infrastructure, we refer to the streets, bridges, tunnels, canals, aqueducts, dams, and other physical objects, landscape interventions, and their networks that have determined the communication, mobility, and maintenance of societies. Infrastructure includes the public works and engineering projects that enabled early modern cities to function and territories to expand. It extends far beyond urban limits to include the natural landscapes and seas harnessed and manipulated to benefit built environments. This panel aims to resituate the importance of infrastructure in early modern architectural history. Our intention is to move beyond the study of individual monuments to locate public works or infrastructural projects within their complex physical and social networks, cutting across the histories of art and architecture, urban planning, administration and policy, and imperialism. We especially welcome papers that approach early modern infrastructure to offer new insight into topics of and methodological approaches to mobility, exchange, technology, and the environment.
