LITERARY ATMOSPHERICS

A special theme section to be published in the open-access journal Literary Geographies (literarygeographies.net):

I'm seeking abstracts focusing on literary engagements with material atmospheres. Essays may address some of these questions:

-how does literature address the production, maintenance, and differential breathability of multiple and shifting atmospheres across local and transnational scales?

-how do writers connect, or attempt to disentangle, the aesthetic, material, and affective aspects of "atmosphere"? Is literary "atmosphere" (often associated with mood or tone) entangled with geographical and environmental accounts of atmosphere as material and trans-corporeal?

-how can we approach atmospheres as a vehicle of literary comparison across genres, demographics, periods, boundaries, and scales?

-how should we theorize the relation between planetary atmospheric change and local (or trans-local) patterns of atmospheric differentiation?

Abstracts (200-250 words) for 5-7,000 word essays should be emailed to Hsuan L. Hsu (hLhsu@ucdavis.edu) by 20 June, 2017. Complete drafts will be sent out for peer review by 5 January, 2018.