American Literary Geographies: Spatializing National Territory in 19th-Century Texts about the U.S. Southern Periphery

Gabriele Pisarz-Ramirez is Professor of American Studies and Minority Studies at Leipzig University. Her areas of research include Mexican American literature and culture, early American hemispheric studies, and the study of the US South in a circum-Caribbean context. Currently she is working within the Collaborative Research Centre “Processes of Spatialization under the Global Condition” at Leipzig University on a project focusing on “Spatial Fictions: (Re)Imaginations of Nationality in the Southern and Western Peripheries of 19th Century America”.

How is space narrated in literary texts, and what is the cultural work of such spatial imaginations? How do spaces in literature relate to spaces outside of literature, and how does literary space making contribute to the production of cultural ideas about space? The talk will explore these questions focusing on representations of geographical space in nineteenth century narratives about Florida, a part of the United States that was long considered peripheral. Florida’s topography, its closeness to the Caribbean and its marginal geographical position made it a site of projection for the negotiation of American national identity and national imaginaries. The lecture reads the multitude of spatial constructions of Florida in antebellum literature as an expression of different spatial imaginations and projected spatial orders. Moreover, it will contrast these antebellum writings to the body of texts emerging after the “closing” of the Florida frontier in the 1860s and 1870s that signal the region’s transformation into a domesticated and commercialized space.

Entrance is free and open to the public.

The event is organized by the Department of American Studies and the Office of International Relations.

University of Graz, Institute of American Studies, 0316/380-8205

amerikanistik@uni-graz.at, http://amerikanistik.uni-graz.at