Call for Abstracts: Extended to September 30 2018.

Special Issue of Space and Culture.

HE Yanli (Sichuan University), Robert T. Tally, Jr. (Texas State University)

The relationship of literature, place and space is a hot topic in the recent decades, as evidenced by the rise of such practices as literary cartography literary geography geocriticism, and spatial literary studies more generally Among those studies, the main debates could be generalized as five perspectives: 1) literary space theories, especially on world, international and national literary Spaces; 2) literary historical maps, atlas, graphs and trees; 3) writers’ mapping texts about real & imaginative Spaces and places; 4) literary maps of writer’s birth, death, and production; 5) theoretical history of spatial turn and the relationship of literature, cartography, geography, geocriticism, ecocriticism.

These debates offer new insights about internationalism, globalization of world literature, and comparative literature studies. For example, Pascale Casanova has discussed the literary space of world literature and national literature, specifically concentrated on shifts in European literary space in the twentieth Century. Franco Moretti has focused on atlas of ninetieth Century European novels and maps of European literary history. Rob Shields draws on Wallerstein’s theory differentiating between center and periphery, the North and South, through spatial and literary history perspectives. Valdes and Kadir’s books includes enormous number of maps devised as tools for locating languages, population density, urban centers and so forth, which give new ways to map comparative literary history. Among their three volumes, Herve Thery’s appendix “The Main Locations of Latin American Literature”, uses five maps to substantiate the concept of “cultural center”. Some maps show the birthplaces of writers who died in the relevant “cultural centers”. Castro focused on the colonial literary space, and the space of Latin American literatures. Robert Tally has built a platform to understand Spaces of American literature, literary cartographies & geographies, spatial/spatiality literary studies, ecocriticism, geocriticism of real and fictional Spaces, geocritical explorations, and space/place/mapping in literary and cultural studies. These are just a few of the critics whose works have spoken to matters of space in relation to world literature in recent years.

Based on these academic achievements, this special issue is aiming at combining spatial studies and literature studies, in order to create the capacity to: a) understand the shifts between literary centers and peripheries from 1827 to 1975, with the flows of minor, small and world literatures; b) clarify the relationship between the conflicts of literary Spaces, spatiality and its related concepts of literatures. Questions to consider include the following:

1. What kind of literary spaces (center, periphery) nurtured or forced the new terms and concepts of literatures, specifically of Goethe’s “World Literature” (Weltliteratur, 1827), Kafka’s “Small Literature” (kleine Literaturen, 1911) , Michel Ragon’s “Secondary Zone Literature” (Seconde Zone Littérature, 1974), Deleuze & Guattari’s “Minor Literature” (littérature mineure, 1975), and Casanova’s “Small Literature” (petite littérature, 1999)?
2. Does world literature space = center, minor/small literature’s space =
   periphery, semi-center/periphery = national literature, emigrating literature? То
   what extent did literary Spaces changed with the shifts of Literary Capitals from
   1827 to 1975 (e.g. London, Paris, Berlin, New York, Moscow)?
3. How to map literary Spaces of peripheries & centers, margins & cores, national & international, dominated & dominating, East & West, North & South through the changing items, histories, anthologies, canons and studies of world & minor/small literatures?
4. How have political spaces and related geographical places shaped literature productions, distributions, translations, institutions from 1827 to 1975, especially in line with colonialism, World War I & II, Cold War, and Berlin Wall?
5. How to map a writer’s literary space, with birth & death place? With
   narratives’ place? With nationalities and life traces? With Publishing houses?
6. How to map national literary space, with writers’ birthplaces, nationalities, or geographic narratives?
7. How to map Spaces of minor, small literatures, with changing items and concepts in world space? With writer’s marginal identities? With marginal political power and its related cultural capitals? With national geographical territories? With international and national literary awards (e.g. Nobel Prize, Booker Prize, Pulitzer Prize)?

If we could draw a round map of “Literary Spaces from 1827 to 1975: Center-Semi—Periphery”, and a flat map of a “Literary Atlas from 1827 to 1975: Mapping Minor/Small and World Literatures”, which language (Germany French, English, Chinese), what color (blue, pink, red), and what marks (flag, boat, canvas, gun) would we use ?

All submissions will be peer reviewed by Space and Culture (For more information, see Journal tab).

For more information about this special issue, contact: yanlihe@scu.edu.cn and yanheli1111@163.com

Abstract Submissions to: yanlihe@scu.edu.cn and copy to yanheli1111@163.com and to spaceandculture.ku@gmail.com

Full Papers will be submitted via https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/sac