[URBANTH-L]CFP: The Spatial Turn: Literature, Film, Geography

[Angela Jancius]

(Forwarded from: H-GERMAN at H-NET.MSU.EDU)


CFP: The Spatial Turn: Literature, Film, Geography (6/1/07;1/15/08; 
edited volume)

Submission Deadlines:
Proposal: 6/1/07, Full essays; 1/15/08

The phrase "spatial turn" signals the growing importance of space as an 
analytical as well as representational category for culture. Migrating 
from fields like geography, urban studies, and architecture, the new 
centrality of space and spatially inflected approaches has transformed 
social-science fields as diverse as sociology, philosophy, and 
psychology. In cultural studies, productive analyses of space 
increasingly cut across the studies of literature, film, popular 
culture, and the visual arts.

We (Jaimey Fisher of UC Davis and Barbara Mennel of the University of 
Florida) are planning a volume that addresses these emerging modes of 
inquiry and are seeking articles that engage with this spatial turn, 
spatiality, and the theoretical implications of both.  While the spatial 
turn is cutting across numerous national cultures, this Call For Papers 
is seeking a particular engagement with questions of space and 
spatiality in the context of German culture, history, and theory. In 
Germany, recent bestsellers like Daniel Kehlmann's _Die Vermessung der 
Welt_ make geographers their heroes; films like Hans-Christian Schmid's 
_Lichter_ portray the dynamic spaces of Europe's border areas, while 
others like Fatih Akin's _Im Juli_ unfold a new European imaginary. In a 
related development, films like Peter Kahane's _Die Architekten_, 
Hubertus Siegert's _Berlin Babylon_ and Hito Steyerl's _Die leere Mitte_ 
engage with novel urban spaces, including cityscapes and architecture. 
Academic debates, led by scholars like Aleida Assmann, have helped 
reconfigure both historical and memory studies, fields more and more 
illuminated by theorists of space such as Henri Lefebvre, Edward W. Soja 
and David Harvey.

We are particularly interested in essays that apply a spatial analysis 
to German literature and film (in that order of preference), but are 
also open to work on memory, architecture, geography, philosophy, and 
queer and feminist theory. We imagine other relevant proposals that 
might engage with specifically German theorizations of space (including 
figures like Simmel, Kracauer, and Benjamin), or that create a 
theoretical dialogue between Germany and the United States.

SUBMISSION INFORMATION:
Please send abstract (250 words maximum) and a short CV to both editors: 
Barbara Mennel at mennel at ufl.edu and Jaimey Fisher at jrfisher at ucdavis.edu

Final essays will be due January 15, 2008. We have engaged in 
preliminary discussions about the volume with a press that has 
articulated a desire to see a full proposal with committed authors and 
their abstracts by June 1, 2007.