CALL FOR PAPERS
Emotional Geographies: Women, Affect, and Urban Space in Post-1945 Translocal Literary
and Visual Texts
Edited volume
Editors:
Ágnes Györke, Senior Lecturer, University of Debrecen, Department of British Studies
Imola Bülgözdi, Senior Lecturer, University of Debrecen, North American Department
Affect studies has emerged as one of the most productive fields of analysis since the turn of the
21st century. Following in the footsteps of Teresa Brennan and Eve Kosofky Sedgwick, for
instance, a number of scholars have explored the function of affect and emotion in literature,
culture and social life. Relying on psychoanalytical as well as social theories, the “affective turn”
has contributed to cultural studies in many ways: books focusing on gender, emotional politics,
transnationalism, the moving image, political engagement and leadership theories from the
perspective of emotion, empathy and affect were published, among many other studies that
investigate the role of emotion in social life.
Few critics, however, have investigated the intersections of emotion and location, particularly,
urban space, in literary and visual texts. Henri Lefebvre has famously claimed that space
expresses social relations, but does it also express emotional geographies? Can we talk about an
urban sensitivity, as Heiko Schmid assumes, which provides a more sophisticated framework for
city studies than Georg Simmel’s famous notion of the blasé attitude, for instance? Can we read
the moving image as a map that connects affects and space?
Our volume aims to explore these issues: we invite papers that investigate the affective
dimensions of space in various post-1945 cultural contexts. We are particularly interested in
comparative and cross-geographical analyses and encourage contributors to focus on the
emotional geographies of iconic cities.
Contributors are invited to explore one of the following themes:
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East-Central Europe as textual and spatial boundary
Translocal empathy
The place of trauma and aggression
Urban geographies of sexuality
Desire, utopia and the city
Emotional border crossings
Crime, guilt and the city
Emotional geography of eating practices
Obsession, addiction and city life
Nostalgia and urban memory
Marginalisation, exclusion and the city
Proposals are welcomed for papers within the field of literature, film, music, and the visual
arts. Abstracts of no more than 500 words are due by October 30, 2015 and notification of
selection will be made by November 15, 2015. Final papers of 7000-8000 words are due by
April 15, 2016. Please send the abstract and your CV of no more than 3 pages to
gyorke.agnes@arts.unideb.hu and bulgozdi.imola@arts.unideb.hu.