CFP: ‘The City and Time’, essay collection

Dr Anne-Marie Evans and Dr Kaley Kramer, York St John University (York, UK)

Deadline for proposals (500 words): 30 November 2016

We anticipate the deadline for finished essays will be June 2017.

We are soliciting proposals for a collection of essays investigating the ways in which the ‘city’ intersects with conceptions of ‘time’ in literary narratives.

As of the 21st century, over half of the world’s population live in cities or ‘mega-urban’ environments. Historical and contemporary literature, as well as speculative future models, presume the dominance of the city as the space of human progress and development, extending to visions of the ‘ecumenopolis’ (Doxiades, 1967) such as Asimov’s ‘Trantor’ (1942) to claustrophobic or liberating spaces of the ‘global city’. 

We are particularly interested in essays that interrogate the idea that the city is a homogenous space of progressive development. The Marxist framework of ‘uneven and combined development’ speaks to some aspects of our concern, but does not form a limit for possible contributions.

How does the city in literature change the experience of time? How does literature represent the layered or hidden ‘time’ of an urban space? Does the experience of time change in different cities or for different subjects?

We welcome proposals from scholars working in historical literatures, contemporary literature, and speculative and science fiction. We intend the collection to be global in scope, and welcome contributions focusing on cities from any part of the world.

We welcome work considering topic such as (but not limited to):

• Queer urban spaces
• Migration and transience
• Experiments with form and narrative
• Urban historiography (fictional and non-fictional)
• Literary geographies and cartography
• Genre, space, and narrating time
• The city as historical subject

Proposals of 500 words, plus a brief bio including recent publications and research, by 30 November 2016 can be sent to k.kramer@yorksj.ac.uk and/or a.evans@yorksj.ac.uk.