February: The City and Film - &l dquo\;Film&rsquo\;s undoubtedly apocryphal origin myth situates its beginn ings in an 1895 Parisian basement where the brothers Lumiere projected a s eries of moving images on a blank screen\, which incited\n equal am ounts of terror and excitement among their bewildered audience members.&rd quo\; &ndash\; &ldquo\;The Visual City: Photography\, Film\, and Postcards \,&rdquo\; The Metropole\, February 6\, 2020. \;
Born in cities and of them\, cine ma and the metropolis are intertwined. The Metropole welcomes pitches for its February theme month on the city and film: how specific cities are dep icted in film\, how cities try to incentivize film-making\, films promotin g urban development\, the reshaping of imaginaries around cities and other means of exploring the metropolis through film. \;
Deadline for pitches is December 15\, deadline for an initial draft will be January 10 (though we have some limited flexibility on this latter date). Guidelines can be seen here. Final submissions should be between 1\,200 and 3\,000 w ords. Authors of selected essays will be compensated $200 for their post. Please send pitches to them etropole@urbanhistory.org.
March: The City Aquatic \;&ndash\; Chicago reversed the flow of its r iver in order to improve sanitation and limit disease\, flood control in 2 0th century Manila drove political discourse\, and Mexico City&rsquo\;s lo cation on a lake has long bedeviled it\, as Matthew Vitz wrote for The Met ropole in 2017 &ldquo\;a city with simultaneously too much water and too l ittle\, flooded while desiccated.&rdquo\; The Metropole welcomes pitches f or its March theme month on cities and water\, The City Aquatic: cities th at stretch across archipelagos\, cities dealing with rising sea levels/flo oding\, cities and drinking water\, cities where the water is a major sour ce of tourism and other related aspects of this metropolitan relationship. \;
Deadline for pitches is January 15\, 2025\ , deadline for an initial draft will be February 10\, 2025 Guidelines can be seen here. Final submissions should be between 1\,200 and 3\,000 words. Authors of selected essays will be compensated $200 for their\n po st. Please send pitches to themetropole@urbanhistory.org. \;
May: Los Angeles \;- With the Ur ban History Association's 2025 conference taking place at the Biltmore Hot el in Downtown Los Angeles (aka DTLA) from October 9-12\, 2025 (see here f or more details\, and of course\, come to the conference!)\, we want to fe ature the City of Angels.
We've written and publis hed pieces about Los Angeles numerous times including recent contributions by David Helps\, David Bruno\, Max Felker-Kantor Meredith Drake Reitan\, and Becky Nicolaides as well as older pieces exploring Chester Himes's L.A .\, the\n city's circus like nature and the metropolis's depiction through film noir. We've highlighted digital humanities projects such as S unset Over Sunset exploring Ed Ruscha's photography of the city and the ma pping of Bunker Hill as part of our annual\n Digital Summer School project. Yet we've never featured it as a theme month. We invite pitches f rom historians and other writers regarding the city's history (we will con sider pieces that focus on L.A. suburbs as well)\, using these examples as \n a guide to what and how it's been covered.
Pitches are due by March 10\, 2025 and drafts due by April 10\, 2025. Guidelines can be seen here. Final submissions should be between 1\,200 and 3\,000 words. Authors of selected essays will be compe nsated $200 for their post. Please send pitches to themetropole@urbanhistory.org.