Surplus Cities: Urban Space within a Fluid American Canon
This roundtable invites critics and writers to rethink cities (or neighborhoods/areas within cities) that are essential to understanding “American writing,” yet still seem to remain outside or “extraneous” to discussions of “American literature.” What historical cities, lost neighborhoods, or even ruins/necropoli are critical to enduring issues explored within American writing? What stories seem lost within locales trimmed of their histories? How does re-centered dialogue around these locations remap American literary production? What trajectories or points of transit are central to discussions of “canonical texts” in the present moment? How do these questions reframe concepts of diaspora or a “literature of the Americas?”