Call for Papers AAG 2010
Call for Papers: 2010 Meeting of the Association of American Geographers
Representing Place: Methods, Tensions, and the Problem of Authenticity
Pamuk answers in the affirmative, but his memoir raises a set of questions of broad importance to geographers. How do we come to be able to represent a place? What is at stake in the representation of a place? Do modes of representation (novels, paintings, photography, film) have their own geography? If so, what are the issues raised by taking those modes of representation elsewhere?
Broadly, this session is organized around the recognition that any representation of place - be it image, text, or sculpture - does not simply emerge from an essential experience of place. Rather, representations of particular places (like Pamuk’s Istanbul) come from somewhere else. Thus, to represent a place is to both search for a genius loci and to articulate relationships with other places. In the case of Pamuk’s Istanbul, his memoir is both an authentic representation of Istanbul and an argument that Istanbul can only be represented by drawing on Western writers and modes of representation. Istanbul: Memories and the City introduces what might be a necessary tension in any representation of place: They always come from somewhere else.
This session aims to gather a diverse set of methodological and conceptual approaches. Possible specific topics might include (but are certainly not limited to):
* Seeing the desert: ecology and imagination in the American West
* Bollywood and Hollywood: representations of India on the silver screen
* Representing jihad: the Middle East on film after 9/11
* Representations of the self in Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North
* Learning to paint the world: Mughal painting under the rule of Jahangir
* Poetry and place: Robert Frost and “The Gift Outright”
* On the outside looking in: Representations of the United States in foreign media
The session will include 5 papers; presenters will have 20 minutes for their presentation and discussion. Interested parties should send a CV and a 250-word abstract to Timur Hammond at timur.hammond@gmail.com no later than October 25, 2009. Preference will be given to papers with a non-European focus, but papers exploring “Western” representations of place in a comparative dimension are also welcome. All questions will be responded to as quickly as possible.
Representing Place: Methods, Tensions, and the Problem of Authenticity
“What I am describing may not, in the end, be special to Istanbul, and perhaps, with the westernization of the entire world, it is inevitable. Perhaps this is why I sometimes read Westerners’ accounts not at arm’s length, as someone else’s exotic dreams, but drawn close by, as if there were my own memories. I enjoy coming across a detail that I have noticed but never remarked upon, perhaps because no one else I know has either.”Part of Orhan Pamuk’s project in his memoir, Istanbul: Memories and the City, is the authentic representation of Istanbul as a place of vibrant experience. Yet in his representation of Istanbul, Pamuk encounters two related problems: First, almost all of the historical accounts of Istanbul during the Ottoman Empire were penned by Westerners, visitors to the city of sultans. Second, Pamuk remains self-conscious about the non-Turkish origins of his own literary craft. Is it possible, he asks, for a Turk to write a memoir (itself a mode of representation with its own specific Western geography) about Istanbul that relies on Western accounts?
- Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul: Memories and the City
Pamuk answers in the affirmative, but his memoir raises a set of questions of broad importance to geographers. How do we come to be able to represent a place? What is at stake in the representation of a place? Do modes of representation (novels, paintings, photography, film) have their own geography? If so, what are the issues raised by taking those modes of representation elsewhere?
Broadly, this session is organized around the recognition that any representation of place - be it image, text, or sculpture - does not simply emerge from an essential experience of place. Rather, representations of particular places (like Pamuk’s Istanbul) come from somewhere else. Thus, to represent a place is to both search for a genius loci and to articulate relationships with other places. In the case of Pamuk’s Istanbul, his memoir is both an authentic representation of Istanbul and an argument that Istanbul can only be represented by drawing on Western writers and modes of representation. Istanbul: Memories and the City introduces what might be a necessary tension in any representation of place: They always come from somewhere else.
This session aims to gather a diverse set of methodological and conceptual approaches. Possible specific topics might include (but are certainly not limited to):
* Seeing the desert: ecology and imagination in the American West
* Bollywood and Hollywood: representations of India on the silver screen
* Representing jihad: the Middle East on film after 9/11
* Representations of the self in Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North
* Learning to paint the world: Mughal painting under the rule of Jahangir
* Poetry and place: Robert Frost and “The Gift Outright”
* On the outside looking in: Representations of the United States in foreign media
The session will include 5 papers; presenters will have 20 minutes for their presentation and discussion. Interested parties should send a CV and a 250-word abstract to Timur Hammond at timur.hammond@gmail.com no later than October 25, 2009. Preference will be given to papers with a non-European focus, but papers exploring “Western” representations of place in a comparative dimension are also welcome. All questions will be responded to as quickly as possible.
Comments