Call for papers: From beauty to utility or green and greenery for all falls..., 24-25 April 2025, University of Pardubice

Call for papers: From beauty to utility or green and greenery for all falls..., 24-25 April 2025, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Pardubice

In the words of the French historian Michel Pastoureau, some of whose books are familiar to the Czech reader, green is not an honest colour - it is cunning, it does not allow one to look at one's cards, it hypocritically changes its symbolism according to one's needs... It has always been relatively easy to obtain it from natural raw materials, which is why it has received less recognition than the colours red, blue or even gold. Green was fickle, and held up badly on fabrics and painting grounds. This instability led to it becoming a symbol of everything that moves and changes, the colour of chance, of play, of fate. 

It was rehabilitated in the 19th century: hypertrophied cities, "centres of stench", took a liking to greenery and promoted it in all the free spaces that remained. Green became the dichotomous antithesis of civilization. It meant life. And it was in the urban environment that green was used to create a new symbolism: a colour that signifies consent, permission, safety, a colour whose opposite is red, signifying prohibition, restriction, danger. With the explosive growth of urban agglomerations during the Industrial Revolution and at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, urbanism gave birth to the theme of living and living in the green, the birth of landscape architecture and the need to balance built-up and multi-functional areas with the green "lungs" of the city - urban gardens and parks with ornamental lawns. These - alongside traditional hospitality establishments - became the new epicentres of social communication, entertainment and spectacle; places where the private and the public (picnics, banquets, sport) mixed. 

While greenery and green spaces were to some extent 'riparian' in cities, they reigned supreme in the open air and needed no human intervention in their realm. The utilitarian value of vast open spaces harnessed greenery to the service of man: greenery came to be shackled, controlled and ultimately devastated. The greenery in the castle parks also had a human face; however, from the point of view of utility, there was a waste of grass, water and human energy. But only until scarcity set in. Then not only castle gardens, city parks, but any, even small ornamental areas turned green: they turned into useful vegetable beds. And a starving population began to "graze" in the wild what it had originally left to dumb faces ... 

Our topics:

A) Greenery as one of the motifs of the paradigmatic turn in historiography: from ontological, cognitive and value anthropocentrism to biocentrism in the humanities

- The ecological crisis and its (historical) context.

- Man as part of nature. 

- The "green" turn in historiography.

B) Greenery and green in communication

- Symbolism of green and greenery in history, language and communication (sacred trees and groves; green elements in heraldry, symbolic communication and representation; "green" sayings, proverbs and idioms; flowery language and its symbolism); 

- Green as a symbol of freedom, permission and security in art and literature vs. green as a paradigm of discipline.

- Greenery (green) in social and political communication.

C) Living and living green, living in green 

- Garden city urbanism; the place and role of green elements in 19th and 20th century urban planning and housing theory; ecological architecture.

- Public parks and orchards, their typology and concepts of planting with trees and flower nests, their creators.

- Courtyards. Introduction of ornamental trees. Gardens, gardens (including botanical gardens) and allotments.

D) Green food, cuisine and medicine.

- Vegetables and natural products in the diet from the Middle Ages to the present; green cuisine; genesis and development of the organic cookbook genre.

- Applied greens - cuisine, beverages. Expanding the portfolio of consumer greens in times of supply crises.

- "Green history of the world" or "Will you have some weed with us?": history of the cultivation and use of cannabis.

Dear colleagues, if the topic of greenery catches your attention, we will be happy to welcome you in Pardubice for the traditional biennial. 

In advance, please send the title of your paper with a brief annotation (up to 800 characters) by 31 January 2025 to the address below.

Best regards

Martin Čapský, Milena Lenderová, Pavel Panoch

Department of Historical Sciences, Faculty of Arts, University of Pardubice

milena.lenderova@upce.cz