Lisbon, School of Arts and Humanities, 30-31 May 2019
In recent years, literary studies have paid increasing attention to the dimension of space, applying concepts and methodologies adopted from Philosophy, Urbanism, Geography or Social Sciences. From Franco Moretti’s early proposals in his Atlas of the European novel, 1800-1900 (1998) and Bertrand Westphal’s Geocriticism (1999) to Robert Tally’s Geocritical explorations (2011), the relation between literature and space, and between literature and cartography, has been approached from different perspectives. The mapping of fiction, in particular, has attracted much specific discussion and theorization (for instance, by Piatti et al, 2017).
On the other hand, this spatial turn in the Humanities has also been aided by the parallel development of the digital turn: digital technologies and methodologies applied to the Humanities, and more specifically to literary studies, have allowed for new approaches to texts and cultural systems. In the case of literary cartographies, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), even with their practical and epistemological limitations, have helped the development of digital literary cartographies, such as The space of Slovenian Literary Culture, Compostela geoliteraria or Atlas das paisagens literárias de Portugal continental, to name but a few examples.
This conference aims to explore the interconnections between geography, cartography and literary studies, with particular attention to the use of digital technologies (namely GIS) for literary analysis. Proposals that apply these methodologies to Iberian literatures will be given priority, although we welcome papers dealing with any linguistic and geographical context.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Theoretical reflections on the crossings between geography, cartography and literature
- Spatial configurations in Literary Theory, Literary History and Comparative Literature
- Geocriticism, literary geography and its applications
- The spaces of the literary system: production, distribution, mediation, reception
- Maps and texts, maps in texts, texts in maps
- Digital Humanities, GIS and digital literary cartographies
- Network analysis applied to literary networks
Proposal submission: All proposals should be sent to maplit@letras.ulisboa.pt by January 11th 2019.
More information in the complete CFP.
Conference organized by the Center for Comparative Studies, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon.
