Envisioning Landscapes, Making Worlds ─ Geography and the Humanities

The past decade has witnessed a remarkable resurgence in the intellectual interplay between geography and the humanities in both academic and public circles. The metaphors and concepts of geography now permeate literature, philosophy and the arts. Concepts such as space, place, landscape, mapping and territory have become pervasive as conceptual frameworks and core metaphors in recent publications by humanities scholars and well-known writers.

Envisioning Landscapes, Making Worlds contains over twenty-five contributions from leading scholars who have engaged this vital intellectual project from various perspectives, both inside and outside of the field of geography. The book is divided into four sections representing different modes of examining the depth and complexity of human meaning invested in maps, attached to landscapes, and embedded in the spaces and places of modern life. The topics covered range widely and include interpretations of space, place, and landscape in literature and the visual arts, philosophical reflections on geographical knowledge, cultural imagination in scientific exploration and travel accounts, and expanded geographical understanding through digital and participatory methodologies. The clashing and blending of cultures caused by globalization and the new technologies that profoundly alter human environmental experience suggest new geographical narratives and representations that are explored here by a multidisciplinary group of authors.

This book is essential reading for students, scholars, and interested general readers seeking to understand the new synergies and creative interplay emerging from this broad intellectual engagement with meaning and geographic experience.

Stephen Daniels is Professor of Cultural Geography at the University of Nottingham, UK.
Dydia DeLyser is Associate Professor of Geography at Louisiana State University, USA.
J. Nicholas Entrikin is Vice President and Associate Provost for Internationalization at the University of Notre Dame.
Douglas Richardson is Executive Director of the Association of American Geographers, USA.

Part I: Mapping Chapter 1. Why America is Called America Franco Farinelli Chapter 2. Above the Dead Cities Derek Gregory Chapter 3. Digital Cartographies and Medieval Geographies Keith Lilley Chapter 4. Mapping the Taboo Gunnar Olsson Chapter 5. ‘Choros, Chora’ and the Question of Landscape Kenneth Olwig Chapter 6. Thematic Cartography and the Study of American History Susan Schulten Part II: Reflecting Chapter 7. Do Places Have Edges? A Geo-Philosophical Inquiry Edward S. Casey Chapter 8. Race, Mobility and the Humanities: A Geosophical Approach Timothy Cresswell Chapter 9.The World in Plain View J. Nicholas Entrikin Chapter 10. Courtly Geography: Nature, Authority and Civility in Early Eighteenth Century France Michael Heffernan Chapter 11. Darwinian Landscapes David Livingstone Chapter 12. Travel and the Domination of Space in the European Imagination Anthony Pagden Chapter 13. The Good Inherit the Earth Yi-Fu Tuan Part III: Representing Chapter 14. Putting Pablo Neruda’s ‘Alturas de Machu Picchu’ In Its Places Jim Cocola Chapter 15. Great Balls of Fire: Envisioning the Brilliant Meteor of 1783 Stephen Daniels Chapter 16. Reading Landscapes and Telling Stories: Geography, the Humanities and Environmental History Diana K. Davis Chapter 17. Participatory Historical Geography? Shaping and Failing to Shape Social Memory at an Oklahoma Monument Dydia De Lyser Chapter 18. Still-Life, After-Life ‘Nature Morte’: W.G. Sebald and the Demands of Landscape Jessica Dubow Chapter 19. The Texture of Space: Desire and Displacement in Hiroshi Teshigahara’s ‘Woman of the Dunes’ Matthew Gandy Chapter 20. Restoration: Synoptic Reflections David Lowenthal Chapter 21. Overlapping Ambiguities, Disciplinary Perspectives and Metaphors of Looking: Reflections on a Landscape Photograph Joan Schwartz Part IV: Performing Chapter 22. Inverting Perspective: Icons’ Performative Geographies Veronica Della Dora Chapter 23. Literary Geography: The Novel as a Spatial Event Sheila Hones Chapter 24. Materialising Vision: Performing a High-Rise View Jane Jacobs Chapter 25. Technician of Light: Patrick Geddes and the Optic of Geography Fraser MacDonald Chapter 26. Deserted Places, Remote Voices: Performing Landscape Michael Pearson Chapter 27. Photography and Its Circulations Gillian Rose Chapter 28. Beyond the Power of Art to Represent?: Narratives and Performances of the Arctic in the 1630s Julie Sanders Chapter 29. Navigating the Northwest Passage Kathryn Yusoff