On my way to the Tampere University of Technology for this year’s ALUS general meeting and mini-symposium. Looking forward to meet up with colleagues from Åbo Akademi, University of Tampere, University of Helsinki, University of Nottingham, University of London, among others.

On the agenda: overview of the latest activities of ALUS; with ao. our recent symposium in Stockholm; upcoming activities, with symposium next February at the University of Essen-Duisburg, and plans for a conference in Ireland later next year. And an overview of our recent publishing activities that have come out of ALUS events, including our latest book Literary Second Cities (Palgrave) and the forthcoming Materiality of Literary Narratives in Urban History (Routledge). We’ll also talk about the new Palgrave series in Literary Urban Studies, which has published its first two volumes. Exciting times for the Associaton for Literary Urban Studies.

Program of the mini-symposium:

14.00-16.00: mini-symposium

‘Urban and rural spaces in the post-Second World War literature of the U.S. South’

Salla Toivola, Comparative Literature, University of Turku

‘The European City and Fantastic Literature during Modernity (19th century narratives)’ Patricia Garcia, Helsinki Collegium, University of Helsinki

‘Maria Edgeworth’s Ormond (1817) from island to country house to commercial metropolis: impressions of worldliness in fictions of development’ Aino Haataja, Åbo Akademi University

‘Heterodox City: Railway Arch Theology in the work of Maurice Davies and Moncure D. Conway’ Peter Jones, Institute of Historical Research, University of London

Presenting my research project on “Narrating the Urban Waterfront in Crisis” today (24.9.) at TIAS, University of Turku, which I started in January of this year. What are the aims, what are the projected outcomes, and why does it matter?

It was an eye-opener to go back to the application for TIAS I wrote in 2016, look at what I envisioned and promise then, and see how aims, objectives, and focus have changed during the past few years.

One aspect is the increasing urgency related to climate change, and a range of relevant articles related to contemporary (city) literature that came out recently.

And then there is also a range of relevant books that has come out, changing the outlook of my focus – in Finnish literature, ao. with the recent publication of Beta – Sensored Reality (2018) and in the case of NY, that of New York 2140.

And why does it matter – not only for an academic community, but also for a broader audience or professionals with the planning and policy community? In part, the answer lies in getting at a better understanding of how narratives in urban planning, policy, and literature of (future) cities are structured and used, which may impact the assessment of ongoing planning and policy practices, and more generally visions of urban futures. It also matters because different textual genres have different limits and different possibilities in how they are able to posit alternative futures – so what can be expected from particular textual genres, and are there more effective ways to communicate (city) futures? And finally, I see an importance in focusing on the language with which city futures are framed, positing the crisis of future challenges in terms of a ”crisis of the imagination”, but with a set of concrete case studies and narrative methods.

Kaupunkitutkimus jalkautuu Jätkäsaareen, ja puhun tänään asuntomessutapahtumassa Jätkäsaaren suunnittelusta ja sen vaihtoehtoisista tarinoista – Jätkä-saari vai naisten kaupunki? Ja miksi kertomukset suunnittelussa ovat tärkeitä?

Aika: 3.-7.9.2018 klo 14:00-16:00
Paikka: Jätkäsaari-paviljonki, Hyväntoivonpuisto, Helsingin Jätkäsaaressa

“Millaista tutkimusta kaupungeista, asuinalueista, kortteleista ja meistä ihmisistä tehdään tällä hetkellä? Kaupunkitutkimus jalkautuu kortteliin -kokonaisuuksissa tutkijat esittelevät viimeisimpiä tutkimustuloksiaan lyhyissä, kansankielisissä esityksissään. Tapahtumapaikkana on Jätkäsaari-paviljonki. Tilaisuuksissa on mahdollisuus keskustella ja kysellä suoraan tutkijoilta. Tilaisuuksien jälkeen on mahdollisuus tavata tutkijoita.”

http://asuntomessut.fi/tulevat-messut/kaupunkielamaa/kaupunkitutkimus-jalkautuu-jatkasaareen/

Puhun itse tänään (5.9.) omasta tutkimuksesta Jätkäsaaren suunnittelun ja kirjallisuuden kertomuksista klo 14-16:

Keskiviikko 5.9.2018 klo 14:00-16:00

Kertomukset, paikat ja historiat

“Kaupungit ovat kerroksellisia: sekä rakennettu ympäristö että paikkoihin liittyvät kertomukset, muistot, mielikuvat ja kokemukset ilmentävät menneisyyttä, nykyisyyttä ja tulevaisuutta. Tässä tilaisuudessa Helsingin, Tampereen ja Turun yliopistojen tutkijat kertovat kaupungeista dynaamisina paikkoina, joihin asukkaat ja toimijat liittävät omia merkityksiään.”

Asukkaat ja toimijat nykyistä, mennyttä ja tulevaa paikallisuutta määrittämässä
Pauliina Latvala-Harvilahti, Turun yliopisto/Helsingin yliopisto, 1.8. alkaen Tampereen yliopisto

Jätkäsaari rakenteellisina kerrostumina – kolme näkökulmaa kaupunginosan kehitykseen
Matti Hannikainen, Helsingin yliopisto

Jätkäsaari vai Naisten kaupunki? Kuviteltu tuleva Jätkäsaari suunnittelussa ja kirjallisuudessa
Lieven Ameel, Turun yliopisto

Paluu perinteiseen urbaaniin kaupunkirakentamiseen Helsingin kaupunkisuunnittelussa?
Miika Norppa, Helsingin yliopisto

Saavutettavuustyökalut sopivien asuntojen etsinnässä
Henrikki Tenkanen, Helsingin yliopisto

Tutkijoiden esittelyt:

Pauliina Latvala-Harvilahti on kulttuuriperinnön, erityisesti muistitiedon dosentti Turun yliopistossa sekä folkloristiikan dosentti Helsingin yliopistossa. Hän johtaa Elävä Suomenlinna -hanketta. Elokuun alusta alkaen hän toimii Tampereen yliopistossa yhteiskuntatieteiden tiedekunnassa yliopistotutkijana.

Matti Hannikainen on kaupunkihistorian tutkija Helsingin yliopistossa. Hän on tutkinut erityisesti Lontoon ja Helsingin historiaa.

Lieven Ameel on kaupunkitutkimuksen ja kaupunkisuunnittelun menetelmien dosentti Tampereen teknillisessä yliopistossa sekä vieraileva tutkija Turun yliopiston ihmistieteellisessä tutkijakollegiumissa.

Miika Norppa on kaupunkimaantieteen tutkija Geotieteiden ja maantieteen laitoksella Helsingin yliopistossa. Hän on tutkinut muun muassa eurooppalaisten kaupunkikeskustojen ja Helsingin kantakaupungin historiallista kehittymistä.

Henrikki Tenkanen työskentelee tutkijana Helsingin Yliopiston Digital Geography Labissa. Hän on kaupunkianalytiikkaan keskittyvän Mapple Oy:n perustajajäsen. Taustaltaan hän on maantieteestä väitellyt datatieteilijä, joka on innoissaan kaikesta liikkumiseen ja saavutettavuuteen liittyvistä kysymyksistä sekä teknologisista ratkaisuista, joilla voidaan tukea päätöksentekoa ja kaupunkisuunnittelua.

Wide-ranging and highly multidisciplinary set of topics in 29 May symposium “The City: Myth and Materiality“, hosted at the Institute of Historical Research.

The symposium is organised by the Association for Literary Urban Studies (ALUS), in collaboration with the Institute of Historical Research (IHR), University of London, with the support of the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies (TIAS).

Several of the people present have been part of the broader research network connected with the Association for Literary Urban Studies, and this symposium is also a reunion with many highly regarded colleagues I’ve worked with before – a.o. Markku Salmela, Giada Peterle, Richard Dennis, Peter Jones, Jason Finch, Elle-Mari Talivee, and Meeria Vesala, among others – and many new acquaintances.

My own presentation looks at the metaphor of the 6th borough in Vision 2020 and Foer’s text “the 6th borough”.

Thanks to all participants for talks, comments, discussions – and looking forward to continue developing these themes together within literary urban studies, and across disciplines (geography, urban history, literary studies).

I participate today in the “Helsinki media city” panel at the Helsinki University Think Corner (in Finnish), organizd by DiMe -project.

At first I was not too sure how much I could offer to this fascinating theme, but upon second thoughts from imaginaries of Helsinki in literature and in planning documents, from polyphony in urban planning and the possibilities of storytelling through GIS, from parkour videos to an interest in the flâneur, my research has touched upon a range of issues with relevance for thinking the city as media. Looking forward to lively discussions.

Offical programme:

Speaking today at the conference “Nineteenth Century Studies and Visions of the Future” (Helsinki, 26.1.2018) on one of my favorite books – the little known utopian novel Sybaris and other homes by Edward E. Hale. I wrote at length about its utopian features in my 2016 article “Cities Utopian, Dystopian and Apocalyptic” (Palgrave Handbook of Literature and the City) – today I’ll speak specifically about the ways in which it frames urban and environmental justice.

Abstract:

Towards a Future in Balance: Utopian Visions of Urban and Environmental Justice in Edward E. Hale’s Sybaris and Other Homes (1869)

Lieven Ameel

In the little-known utopian text “My Visit to Sybaris”, in Edward E. Hale’s Sybaris and Other Homes (1869), the protagonist finds himself unexpectedly in an Italian-Greek city preserved from antiquity, whose inhabitants combine highly developed technology with ancient legal practices. The text’s concerns range from the problematics of urban housing and financial reform to urban and suburban planning. A particularly intriguing concept is that of “harpagmos”, a verdict passed for a crime when someone “has taken from a citizen what he cannot restore” (Hale 52). The crime includes the stealing of time, echoing contemporary discussions about labour and currency reform. There are interesting ecological dimensions, too, since the verdict of “harpagmos” can be passed for disturbing the natural and ecological harmony. In this respect, “Sybaris” prefigures later utopian/dystopian accounts concerned with ecological catastrophes. In my presentation, I will examine “My Visit to Sybaris” in its context of nineteenth-century utopian literature, with a particular interest in the environmental undercurrents in the text. My approach is further informed by a concern with how the paratextual elements of the text, its various time frames, as well as the intertextual references (including numerous references to texts from Antiquity) point to particular readings of the text.

I’m participating on 1 December in a workshop by NARMESH (“narrating the mesh”) on Describing Nonhuman Spaces. Great to be back at my Alma Mater – Ghent University – for a discussion on experiences of nonhuman space in literature, organized by Marco Caracciolo.

I’m speaking on “nonhuman presence, environmental change, and urban crisis in 21st century literary fiction – Folding Cities”, with a focus on threatening nonhuman presences in Open City, Chronic City, Odds Against Tomorrow, and 10:04.

With ao Sarianna Kankkunen, Nathan D. Frank, Laura Oulanne, Marlene Marcussen, Carolin Gebauer, David Rodriguez, Kaisa Kortekallio, Brian J. McAllister, Ridvan Askin, and Michael Karlsson Pedersen.

[image: dekrook.be]

Interesting new volume out now, in the field of spatial humanities: the Routledge volume Teaching Space, Place, and Literature (ed. by Robert T. Tally Jr.). Including my article on teaching the city walk and the panorama. Introduction below.

Thanks to my students of the course “Space, City and Literature” at the University of Tampere, whose assignments and contributions during the course are part of the material discussed in the article.

Ameel, Lieven 2017: “: Teaching Urban Literary Studies.”  In Tally, Robert Jr. (ed.): Teaching Space, Place, and Literature. London: Routledge, 89-98.

The city hung in my window . . .

In an early scene in Sylvia Plath’s The Ball Jar (1971/1988), the protagonist has returned to her hotel room in New York after a confusing outing in the city. Unable to fully open her hotel window on the seventeenth floor, Esther Greenwood tries to get a view of the city where she has only recently arrived:

“By standing at the left side of the window and laying my cheek to the woodwork, I could see downtown to where the UN balanced itself in the dark, like a weird green Martian honeycomb. I could see the moving red and white lights along the drive and the lights of the bridges whose names I didn’t know.

The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence.

I knew perfectly well the cars were making noise, and the people in them and behind the lit windows of the buildings were making a noise, and the river was making a noise, but I couldn’t hear a thing. The city hung in my window, flat as a poster, glittering and blinking, but it might just as well not have been there at all, for all the good it did me.”

The view from above of the city, in this quote, is instructive of several of the effects achieved by the panorama in a city novel. It conveys and thematizes the protago­nist’s uneasiness with the city, her literal inability to hear its sounds, the distance she feels between herself and her surroundings. At the same time, there is also paradoxi­cally a connection since the view of the city resonates with her inner feelings: the total lack of noise in the panorama is literally the protagonist’s own silence. Dis­tance seems also concomitant with a particular kind of figurative language, which

translates concrete spatial features in metaphorical terms, as with “green Martian honeycomb” of the UN building.

Crucial to the panorama is the explicit way in which the perspective is framed – in this case, the extent to which the view is limited, obstructed, and partly closed to the protagonist. In a novel pregnant with forced enclosure, the inability to escape social and moral restrictions is made tangible in the failure to fully open the window, the difficulty, in “laying my cheek to the woodwork” to gain an unrestricted meaning-giving perspective. In drawing attention to its framing, the panorama underlines the artificiality of the view. To Esther, the city appears as a two-dimensional apparition, “flat as a poster.” Artificial to the protagonist, it alerts the reader to the broader constructed nature of the narration: the fact that the view the reader gets of the storyworld and the city within it is carefully framed and composed.

In the city novel, the panorama is a narrative strategy of the first order, often juxtaposed with and complemented by the city walk. In The Bell Jar, the panorama comes immediately after a reference to the protagonist’s long walk back to her hotel, a walk that is presented as much less problematic for the protagonist than the attempt to gain an overview of the city: as the narrator confidently notes: “walking has never fazed me.” Yet the reader learns that she has used a map – a bird’s-eye view of sorts – for her orientation, one indication that a high vantage point and the experience on the street are complementary rather than oppositional, and that the experience of the city oscillates between these two perspectives.

The panorama and the city walker

The city walker in literature, with its roots in the contested figure of the flâneur, and the panorama, with its intimation of a totalization of space, constitute together a crucial pair of hermeneutic approaches to space in the city novel and to the complex relationship between spatial surroundings, the protagonist, and their devel­opment. In this article, they will be taken as key conceptualizations in teaching literary urban studies. I will start out by examining some of the critical secondary literature pertinent to these conceptualizations. These will be complemented by a discussion of practical teaching assignments aimed to enable students to apply theoretical concepts from urban and literary studies to their own experiences of the urban environment, and to take the classroom material into the city.

(Ameel 2017, 89-90)

My review of Narrating Space / Spatializing Narrative: where narrative theory and geography meet, in the journal Social & Cultural Geography, has just been published on Taylor & Francis Online.

A free eprint link to the publication can be found here:

http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/9PWYyfsgAeXJpiIMBEIx/full

From the review:

“Narrating Space / Spatializing Narratives is a book that will be of interest for everyone working on the interdisciplinary crossroads where questions of space and narrative meet. It will set readers from a range of disciplines on track toward new sources, methods, and their applications. The book exemplifies some of the challenges still to be overcome, in particular, in terms of transposing the concept of narrative to other fields of study without diluting its terminological precision. While the opening chapters will provide a well-structured conceptual toolbox to any newcomer to the field, more advanced scholars from a range of backgrounds will find in this book new directions for research in an exciting and burgeoning field that only recently has begun to fully explore the potential of a narrative analysis – on the basis of concepts and methods from narrative and literary studies – for questions of space.”

Ameel, Lieven 2017: “Narrating Space / Spatializing Narrative: where narrative theory and geography meet.” In Social & Cultural Geography.