ELN 52.1 Spring/Summer 2014
“Imaginary Cartographies”
Call for Papers: ELN Special Issue, “Imaginary Cartographies.”
In recent decades the map has emerged as a key site of cultural and
imaginative reworking, and yet the history of such symbolic mediations
between humans and their spatial environment is also ancient and
complex. Volume 52.1 of ELN (Spring/Summer 2014) will investigate
“Imaginary Cartographies” across centuries and cultural contexts to
explore a range of these symbolic mediations. The term intends to
include those methods of mapping literary space that generate both
imaginative and culturally revealing understandings of recognizable
and/or created worlds and their modes of habitation. “Imaginary
Cartographies” refers to actual as well as purely conceptual forms of
mapping, and includes spaces of considerable variability: from the
mapping of cosmic, global, or local space, to charting the spaces of the
body or the page. Geographers have argued that the social history of
maps, unlike that of literature, art, or music, has few genuinely
popular, or subversive modes of expression because maps pre-eminently
are a language of power, not of protest; in this view, the map remains a
site of territorial knowledge and state power, authority and
jurisdiction, social codes and spatial disciplines—one intent upon
eliding its tactile and material conditions of production. “Imaginary
Cartographies” welcomes approaches to mapping that complicate this
account by considering subaltern or alternative
cartographies—cartographies that elude, interrupt, or disperse forms of
power, or serve not-yet-imagined spectrums of interests.
Winner of the Phoenix Award for Editorial Achievement from the Council
of Editors of Learned Journals in 2008, the biannual journal ELN
(English Language Notes) has been devoted exclusively to special topics
in all fields of literary and cultural studies since its dramatic
redesign in 2006. Now a respected, peer-reviewed journal, the new ELN
provides a unique forum for cutting-edge debate and exchange among
university-affiliated and independent scholars, artists of all kinds,
and academic as well as cultural institutions. The journal is
particularly determined to revive and reenergize its traditional
commitment to shorter notes, roundtable discussions, collaborative and
interdisciplinary work, and all forms of scholarly innovation. For more
information on previous issues please visit our website:
http://english.colorado.edu/englishlanguagenotes/
Contributors may wish to present recent research findings on particular
writers, cultural figures, or texts, or they may venture insights on
broadly defined subjects, such as the aesthetics or politics of
imaginary cartographies in a particular cultural or historical instance;
on what constitutes cartographic assumptions or practices about space,
nature, cosmology, or exploration at particular historical moments; on
how cartography intersects with broader issues of knowledge creation and
management, or the history of capital and conquest; or on the
entanglement of literary theory with debates about (digitally) mapping
texts individually or categorically. Papers on literature and particular
cartographic practices are welcome: e.g. psychogeography, geomancy,
cognitive mapping, digital mapping, and so on. Actual maps that are in
some way conversant with literary concerns are also welcome.
Position papers and essays of no longer than twenty-five manuscript
pages are invited from scholars in all fields of literature, geography,
history, philosophy, and the arts. Along with analytical, interpretive,
and historical scholarship, we are also interested in creative work that
moves traditional forms of literary analysis into new styles of critical
writing. The editors also encourage collaborative work and are happy to
consider works that are submitted together as topical clusters. Another
format that we invite is a debate or conversation between or among
contributors working on a related aspect of cartography.
Please send abstracts, proposals, and inquiries to the issue editor,
Karen Jacobs: ([log in to unmask]) by November 15, 2013.
Finished submissions are due December 15, 2013 (in Chicago style, MS
Word 12 pt, images as JPEGs) to:
Special Issue Editor, “Imaginary Cartographies”
English Language Notes
University of Colorado, Boulder
Hellems 101, 226 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0226
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