Monthly Archives: November 2013

The first issue [Free Access] of the Journal of Urban Cultural Studies [It’s Official]

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Very happy to announce that…

the long awaited first issue of the Journal of Urban Cultural Studies is now posted on Intellect’s website! click here to see its contents, [and remember to have your library subscribe…] The contents of the first issue can be accessed free of charge here.

Thanks to all who have made this possible — and particularly to the crew at Intellect, the JUCS editorial board & numerous external peer reviewers, (it does take a village), but most of all thanks go to the authors whose interdisciplinary humanities-social science work has made this all so worthwhile.

Issue 1.2 will be on the way soon enough!

Niemeyer: the future is LUMPY

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Short review of the evolving Caminho Niemeyer in Niteroi, Brazil. The key idea is the tension between the modernist form of the buildings, and the execution.

RICHARD J WILLIAMS

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I’m standing in the middle of the Caminho Nimeyer in Niteroí, just outside Rio de Janeiro. The Caminho is one of the architect’s last big projects, and remains unfinished. It’s a great concrete parade ground on the waterfront overlooking Rio, punctuated with (so far) three buildings that are unmistakably Niemeyer’s: a theatre with an undulating roof and angled walls; a small dome set at ground level, and a larger one with a serpentine ramp leading to an entrance above ground. All could have been built at any point since 1945. The theatre revisits the iconic chapel at Pampulha. The domes are Brasília. The ramps nod to the celebrated Museu de Arte Contemporânea a mile down the road. There are a couple of other less spectacular elements: a pretty gatehouse that could have been done by Richard Neutra in 30s Hollywood. And there’s a little information centre in black glass, a…

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[SLAS Panel] Imagining The neoliberal city: new Latin American cinema and urban space

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The Society for Latin American Studies will hold their annual conference in 2014 at Birkbeck, University of London. This will be the 50th SLAS conference, and we are planning a vibrant programme that will reflect the diversity of Latin American studies today. We expect to welcome approximately 350 academics to the two-day event.

The conference arrivals desk will be open from the afternoon on the 2nd of April and a welcome reception will be held for early arrivals. The panels will run all day on the 3rd of April and 4th of April.

[SLAS PANEL] Imagining the neoliberal city: new Latin American cinema and urban space

Convenors

Fernando Sdrigotti (Royal Holloway) email
Santiago Oyarzabal (Warwick University) email

Short Abstract

This panel aims to look at the way in which many of the films of the last 20 years have represented and re-imagined Latin American urban space, many times affecting the way the Latin American city is perceived and experienced

Long Abstract

The last twenty years have seen a rebirth of Latin American cinema, both in terms of the production output in the area as well as with regards to the international recognition achieved by many of the names associated with this generation of filmmakers. This is an interesting phenomenon which overlaps with one of the most devastating economic crises the region has ever seen. The city, in its many forms from utopia to dystopia, has been one of the privileged settings during these years, many times becoming the centre through which these works articulate a dialogue with their present and their political and economic contexts. This panel aims to look at the way in which many of the films of this period have attempted both to represent and re-imagine Latin American urban space, many times affecting the way the Latin American city is perceived and experienced.

Call for Papers
The call for papers is now open and will close on 22 November. To propose a paper to an accepted panel, first read the information on the Call for papers page.

Call for Papers: ELN Special Issue, “Imaginary Cartographies.”

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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 Continue reading →