Fourth Annual Graduate Student Conference for the Group for the Study of Early Cultures, The University of California, Irvine

April 20 – 21, 2012
Keynote Speaker: Julian Yates, University of Delaware

The commons once referred to tracts of land – forests and meadows, seas and waterways – open to collective use
by members of one or more communities… The commons
also referred to a people distinguished from nobility by virtue of their birth, occupations, and cultural practices. There was a distinctly political characteristic to the commons that implied the bearing of communal burdens and the sharing of certain limited rights and privileges…

This conference aims to gather models of the commons in its various modes including but not limited to land, public space, joint ownership, and collective action in medieval and Renaissance practice, with some sense of their viability as models for alternative economic, spatial, artistic, and political practice today.
http://www.humanities.uci.edu/SOH/bin/display_news_detail.php?recid=1626&dept_code_val=993&css_path=earlycultures&bkgd=e7d9ac
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