Call for Papers: The Cartographic Imagination: Art, Literature and Mapping in the United States, 1945-1980

A two-day international conference funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art, in conjunction with the Centre for American Studies at the University of Kent and the Départment d’Etudes Anglophones at the University of Strasbourg.

Dates: 18-19 May 2018

Venue: Reid Hall, 4 Rue de Chevreuse, 75006, Paris, France

Organizers: Monica Manolescu (University of Strasbourg); Will Norman (University of Kent)

Keynote speakers: Pamela Lee (Stanford University), David Herd (University of Kent) and Stephen Collier (Simon Fraser University)

This conference investigates spatial representations and practices in postwar US literature and art, and their intersection with mapping. We are particularly interested in the ways in which American space is constructed, imagined, reconfigured, displaced, and questioned in writing and in artistic form. The conference will examine the specificity of the literary and artistic appropriation of cartographic tropes, as well as the possible points of convergence and divergence of literature and art in relation to mapping and the material culture of mapping.

We invite proposals for papers and panels that address maps and mapping in postwar American art, literature, or both. Possible topics may include but are not limited to:

• Art and the material culture of cartography
• Cartographic inadequacy as aesthetic premise
• Earthworks: the dialectics of site and non-site
• Grids
• Contingent mapping: walking as an aesthetic practice
• Artist’s books and mapping
• The legacy of Situationism in the United States
• Cold War ideologies and mapping in art and literature
• Maps and American imperialism
• Mapping the medium
• Mapping as metaphor
• Counter-mapping
• The cartographic trope in theory
• The limits of the cartographic imagination
• The aesthetics of maps
• The significance of cartography for individual artists and writers

Please submit an individual proposal of no more than 350 words or an outline for a 3 paper panel proposal to cartographicimagination@gmail.com by 30 November, 2017. Papers will be limited to 20 minutes. Please include your name, a short bio, and email address in your proposal. Registration for the conference will be free of charge. Registered students may indicate that they wish to be considered for a small bursary to offset costs of travel and accommodation.

Please email enquiries to cartographicimagination@gmail.com.

Conference website: https://www.kent.ac.uk/english/conferences/cartographicimagination/index.html