Layers and Connections of the Political
International Conference of the Association for Political History
14-25 June 2021 – LUISS Guido Carli University Rome, Italy
Politics has changed a lot, in the last half-century – and so has political history. The boundaries of the political have been redrawn. The large social and political bodies of the mid-twentieth century have grown weaker or have dissolved. Public institutions have become both less insulated from society and less effective in controlling and guiding it. Therefore, defining what is political has become more difficult. Political historians have confronted this challenge, and in the process have gained a deeper understanding of their object of study, have enlarged their scope and refined their methodologies, and have entered into closer dialogue with the “other” histories and the social sciences.
The fragmentation of the political and the increasing uncertainty of its boundaries have made political historians more acutely aware that politics does not exist only “high up” and on the macro level, but reaches deep into private lives, shapes people’s identities and perceptions, interferes with their thoughts and emotions, regulates and modifies their behaviour. Actions and reactions performed on the micro level can in turn not only determine how initiatives from the top are received, reinterpreted and remoulded, but also condition, constrain and change the institutions and subjects that act on the macro level.
For its 2020-2021 conference (14-25 June 2021 – LUISS Guido Carli University, Rome, Italy), the Association for Political History presents a program that considers, in a historical perspective, examples of how the multiple layers of the political have connected and interacted with each other during the last three centuries. We welcome senior researchers, but also encourage PhD candidates and young scholars to participate in our conference.
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