{"id":2414,"date":"2011-07-29T16:23:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-29T16:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/scitent.com\/2011\/07\/29\/cfp-urban-monstrosities-1012011-412012\/"},"modified":"2011-07-29T16:23:00","modified_gmt":"2011-07-29T16:23:00","slug":"cfp-urban-monstrosities-1012011-412012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/2011\/07\/29\/cfp-urban-monstrosities-1012011-412012\/","title":{"rendered":"CFP: Urban Monstrosities (10\/1\/2011; 4\/1\/2012)"},"content":{"rendered":"


<\/span><\/span>
Call for Articles: <\/span>Edited Collection <\/span>Urban Monstrosities<\/i><\/span>
<\/span>Joseph Lamperez and J. Alexandra McGhee, University of Rochester<\/span>
<\/span>
<\/span>The contemporary city bears the trace of at least two seismic developments: <\/span>the Enlightenment rationalization of urban space, marked by <\/span>the twinned banishment of death to the urban periphery and the creation of a <\/span>regime of spatial surveillance; and the emergence of the modern city as <\/span>simulacrum, its widened boulevards and glossy surfaces allowing for the <\/span>continual flow of commodities and capital. How do contemporary authors of <\/span>speculative fiction figure and respond to these and other major urban <\/span>transformations in their own work? We are seeking articles that explore the <\/span>city as a space of monstrous potential, and which examine how the uncanny <\/span>cityscape has (d)evolved since the Industrial Revolution. SF and weird <\/span>fiction, for example, often depict the city as a living organism that is <\/span>alternately transformative and malicious. How do these and other literary <\/span>and artistic modes figure urban space as a site of bizarre experiences and <\/span>subjectivities? What entity can be read in, and attempts to speak through, <\/span>the oneiric facades of the architectural fantasia?  What are the <\/span>ramifications of a sentient city? How useful are Blake's \u201cdark Satanic <\/span>Mills,\" Dickens's \"Animate London,\" and Eliot's \"unreal\" cities as models <\/span>for reading contemporary instances of urban monstrosity?<\/span>
<\/span>
<\/span>This collection attempts to posit the neglected but important link between <\/span>the nineteenth and early twentieth century city as an unreal spectacle of <\/span>overwhelming crowds, urban wilderness, and new social formations, and <\/span>contemporary representations of the city as an incipient organism or <\/span>fantastic bestiary, its space a site of chthonic splendor and ruinous <\/span>allure. What new readings become possible when sophisticated modern <\/span>fantasists like China Mieville and Jeff VanderMeer are placed in a tradition <\/span>of urban representation stretching back to Wordsworth and Blake, Baudelaire <\/span>and Poe? How can Mayhew's explorations or Benjamin's body of work on the <\/span>fl\u00e2neur and the urban phantasmagoria offer new ways of theorizing the global <\/span>renaissance of street art, or the burgeoning documentation and <\/span>aestheticization of derelict architectural structures known as \"ruin porn\"? <\/span>Are areas of potential insurrection within the city\u2014Bhabha\u2019s \u201cthird space,\u201d <\/span>the urban carnivalesque\u2014inimical to, or in league with urban monstrosity?<\/span>
<\/span>
<\/span>Please send a 500-word abstract, tentative title and brief (1-2 pp) CV to <\/span>Joseph Lamperez at <\/span>josephlamperez@gmail.com<\/a><\/span> <\/span>and J. Alexandra McGhee at <\/span>alimcghee@gmail.com<\/a><\/span> <\/span>by October 1, 2011<\/b>. Completed articles will be due April <\/b><\/span>1, 2012<\/b>, and should be between 3500-5000 words.  For queries please contact <\/span>Joseph Lamperez and J. Alexandra McGhee at the email addresses above.<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Call for Articles: Edited Collection Urban MonstrositiesJoseph Lamperez and J. Alexandra McGhee, University of RochesterThe contemporary city bears the trace of at least two seismic developments: the Enlightenment rationalization of urban space, marked by the twinned banishment of death to the urban periphery and the creation of a regime of spatial surveillance; and the emergence of the modern city as simulacrum, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[498],"tags":[574,506,602],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2414"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}