For the majority of us the opportunity to travel has never been greater, yet differences in mobility highlight inequalities that have wider social implications. Exploring how and why attitudes towards movement have evolved across generations, the case studies in this essay collection range from medieval to modern times and cover several continents.
This is the first book dedicated to literary and cultural scholars’ engagement with mobilities scholarship. As such, the volume both advances new theoretical approaches to the study of culture and furthers the recent “humanities turn” in mobilities studies. The book’s scholarship is deeply informed by cultural geography’s vision of a mobilised reconceptualisation of space and place, but also by the contribution of literary scholars in articulating questions of travel, technologies of transport, (post)colonialism and migration through a close engagement with textual materials. A comprehensive introduction maps pre-histories and emerging directions of this exciting interdisciplinary endeavor while taking up the theoretical and methodological challenges of the burgeoning subfield. Contributions range across geographical and disciplinary boundaries to address questions of embodied subjectivities, mobility and the nation, geopolitics of migration, and mobilities futures.
Mobility was central to imperialism, from the human movements entailed in exploration, travel and migration to the information, communications and commodity flows vital to trade, science, governance and military power. While historians have written on exploration, commerce, imperial transport and communications networks, and the movements of slaves, soldiers and scientists, few have reflected upon the social, cultural, economic and political significance of mobile practices, subjects and infrastructures that underpin imperial networks, or examined the qualities of movement valued by imperial powers and agents at different times. This collection explores the intersection of debates on imperial relations, colonialism and empire with emerging work on mobility. In doing this, it traces how the movements of people, representations and commodities helped to constitute the British empire from the late-eighteenth century through to the Second World War.
The key aim of this volume is to demonstrate ways in which an understanding of history can be used to inform present-day transport and mobility policies. This is not to say that history repeats itself, or that every contemporary transport dilemma has an historical counterpart: rather, the contributors to this book argue that in many contexts of transport planning a better understanding of the context and consequences of past decisions and processes could lead to more effective policy decisions. Collectively the authors explore the ways in which the methods and approaches of historical research may be applied to contemporary transport and policy issues across a wide range of transport modes and contexts. By linking two bodies of academic research that for the most part remain separate this volume helps to inform current transport and mobility policies and to stimulate innovative new research that links studies of both past and present mobilities.
The beginning of the 21st century has seen important shifts in mobility cultures around the world, as the West’s media-driven car culture has contrasted with existing local mobilities, from rickshaws in India and minibuses in Africa to cycling in China. In this expansive volume, historian Gijs Mom explores how contemporary mobility has been impacted by social, political, and economic forces on a global scale, as in light of local mobility cultures, the car as an ‘adventure machine’ seems to lose cultural influence in favor of the car’s status character.
Over the past twenty years there has been something of a ‘mobilities turn’ across many disciplines in the social sciences. This book charts the increasing influence this turn is having on scholars in the arts and humanities, tracing the importance of questions and feelings of movement to scholars and arts practitioners across fields such as literary studies, historical geography, history, poetry and film. The book outlines what a mobilities turn might look like in the arts and humanities, tracing a genealogy of humanities engagements with themes of movement and mobility, and examining the different methods and textual sources humanities scholars have deployed. The book is uniquely positioned to speak to two audiences: mobilities scholars in the social sciences interested in learning more about how literary and cultural texts may be incorporated into their research, and researchers in the humanities who have only recently discovered that their thematic, or conceptual interest, in movement and mobility speaks directly to theories and philosophies that have circulated in the social sciences. This diverse and stimulating collection demonstrates the potential for future intellectual dialogues and creative collaborations around the theme of mobility. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Mobilities journal.
This book traces the history of the Annunciation, exploring the deep and lasting impact of the event on the Western imagination. Waller explores the Annunciation from its appearance in Luke’s Gospel, to its rise to prominence in religious doctrine and popular culture, and its gradual decline in importance during the Enlightenment.
‘Hurry’ is an intrinsic component of modernity. It exists not only in tandem with modern constructions of mobility, speed, rhythm, and time–space compression, but also with infrastructures, technologies, practices, and emotions associated with the experience of the ‘mobilizing modern’. ‘Hurry’ is not simply speed. It may result in congestion, slowing-down, or inaction in the face of over-stimulus. Speeding-up is often competitive: faster traffic on better roads made it harder for pedestrians to cross, or for horse-drawn vehicles and cyclists to share the carriageway with motorized vehicles. Focusing on the cultural and material manifestations of ‘hurry’, the book’s contributors analyse the complexities, tensions, and contradictions inherent in the impulse to higher rates of circulation in modernizing cities. The collection includes, but also goes beyond, accounts of new forms of mobility (bicycles, buses, underground trains) and infrastructure (street layouts and surfaces, business exchanges, and hotels) to show how modernity’s ‘architectures of hurry’ have been experienced, represented, and practised since the mid nineteenth century. Ten case studies explore different expressions of ‘hurry’ across cities and urban regions in Asia, Europe, and North and South America, and substantial introductory and concluding chapters situate ‘hurry’ in the wider context of modernity and mobility studies and reflect on the future of ‘hurry’ in an ever-accelerating world. This diverse collection will be relevant to researchers, scholars, and practitioners in the fields of planning, cultural and historical geography, urban history, and urban sociology.
Literary Urban Studies and How to Practice It is the first textbook in literary urban studies (LUS). It illuminates and investigates this exciting field, which has grown since the humanities’ ‘spatial turn’ of the 1990s and 2000s. The book introduces city literature, urban methods of reading, classics in LUS and new directions in the field. It outlines the located qualities of literary narratives, texts and events through three units. First, the concept of the city and the main methods and terms needed as tools for investigating city literatures are introduced. A second section, ordered historically, shows how notions like pre-modern, realist, modernist, postcolonial and planetary actually work in nuanced explorations of actual writers, texts and places. The third unit covers literary urban modes: fictional and non-fictional prose in multiple genres; poetry and the idea of the city; dramatic city representation and the theatre as urban place. Multiple key categories of place are explored: the sacred spaces of religion; entry points such as railway stations and junctions; residential areas such as the ‘slum’, suburb and mass housing district; hubs of publishing and performance; categories of city such as the port and resort. In each chapter key terms, reflection questions and tasks labelled ‘Research It’ support reference and learning. Some Research It tasks enable readers to enter new areas of LUS by engaging with neighbouring disciplines like human geography, cultural history, sociology and urban studies. Others equip users by sharpening particular skills of writing or documentation. A thorough glossary of key terms and concepts aids the reader. Literary Urban Studies and How to Practice It is designed for application to literatures and cities in any period and part of the world. Armed with it, humanities researchers at any career stage can develop their interdisciplinary skills and ability to participate in activism and public debates while becoming specialised in LUS. The book is a gateway to practicing LUS and spatial literary research.
