American Literary Geographies: Space and Cultural Production to 1888 (collection)

In light of the recent "spatial turn" in critical theory and various critical attempts to "remap" the field of American studies, we are seeking contributions for an essay collection that investigates intersections between geography and cultural production prior to the founding of the National Geographic Society in 1888. Proposals are invited to address some of the following questions: How does the recent turn towards spatial questions in cultural studies affect the field of American studies? How do the methods of historical geography and literary analysis complement each other? How does the geographical rhetoric in critical theory and practice influence the conception of identity in the imperial, colonial, or national contexts? How has the technology and materiality of geographic discourse informed subjectivities, sexualities, literatures, and cultures?

While the collection will be organized around questions of U. S. literary history, essays that address other geographies (such as transatlantic or hemispheric perspectives) and disciplines (such as visual art, material culture, urban studies, and historiography—not to mention cultural geography) are welcome. Possible themes include, but are not limited to:

• geographies of identity: personal/psychological space, gendered spaces, domestic fiction, religion and representational spaces, racial geographies, Black Atlantic, diaspora
• transnational (hemispheric, transatlantic, etc.) perspectives: imperialism, intertextuality, comparative approaches, Monroe Doctrine, gunboat diplomacy, Mexican-American War
• genre and geography: pastoral, travelogues, romance, exploration, maritime literature
• technologies of geographic writing: print culture, history of cartography, geography textbooks, land surveys
• geography and nation-building: “imagined community,” “democratic social space,” National Geographic Society, American exceptionalism
• mobile geographies: nomadism, exile, migration, speed, steamships, canals, railroads
• theorizing literature and geography: spatial aspects of metaphor and metonymy, new formalism, The Space of Literature, poetics and “cognitive mapping”

Please send a cv and a 3-page proposal (or completed paper) to one of the contacts below by 7 October, 2003. Accepted papers of 6,000-7,500 words will be due by 1 August, 2004.