Description: We welcome papers exploring the interactions between American texts/authors and actual cartographic documents, from the 15th century to the present day. Possible topics may include (but are not limited to):
- Maps as tools of knowledge: how texts position themselves in relation to the supposed accuracy and authority of maps, and their role in shaping the literary imagination.
- Maps as political objects and instruments of colonization or reclamation: how texts relate to maps to negotiate issues of territoriality, appropriation, separation (borders), and erasure (such as the replacement of place names). How do Eurocentric cartographic practices and conventions interact with, or challenge, other Indigenous or diasporic mapping traditions, and how are these dynamics represented and challenged in literature?
- Maps as visual and material documents: how the visual language and materiality of maps—both Euro-American and Indigenous—influence textual or literary forms, including novels, poems, plays, and other media.
- Maps as interfaces of environmental awareness: how interactions between maps and texts contribute to a heightened visibility of the other-than-human world, either deliberately or indirectly.
- Gender, ethnicity, and racialization in map use: how maps and their literary representations intersect with issues of masculinity, domesticity, and the racialization of space.
- Book history, textual studies, and archival contexts: how the presence of maps in literary archives or within book history shapes interpretations of American literature, highlighting evolving cultural attitudes toward the relationship between maps and texts.
Submission guidelines: Please submit a 300-word abstract and a brief bio to au************@gm***.com, ma*****@un*****.fr, pa************@un******.fr, and ju**********@en******.fr
Submission deadlines: June 15th, 2025
Institution: École normale supérieure de Lyon, France
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