Geographies of Affect in Contemporary Literature and Visual Culture Central Europe and the West (Spatial Practices)

Geographies of Affect in Contemporary Literature and Visual Culture opens a dialogue between the literary and filmic works produced in Central Europe and in the Anglophone world. It relies on the concept of translocality to explore this corpus, offering new readings of contemporary Hungarian films as well as urban fiction and poetry in English. Calling attention to the role of affect in imagining city space, the volume investigates György Pálfi’s Taxidermia, Béla Tarr’s Family Nest, Teju Cole’s Open City, Toni Morrison’s Jazz, China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun, Chimamanda Adichie’s Americanah, and Patrick Neate’s City of Tiny Lights, among many other urban narratives. Contributors examine both widely explored emotions and under-researched affects, such as shame, fascination, and the role of withdrawal in contemporary literature and culture.

Contributors: Tamás Bényei, Imola Bülgözdi, Fanni Feldmann, Zsolt Győri, Ágnes Györke, Brigitta Hudácskó, György Kalmár, Anna Kérchy, Márta Kőrösi, Jennifer Leetsch, Katalin Pálinkás, Miklós Takács, Pieter Vermeulen.

Ágnes Györke, Ph.D. (2009), is Associate Professor of English at Károli Gáspár University in Budapest. Her recent publications include “Doris Lessing’s London Observed and the Limits of Empathy” (Etudes Anglaises) and “Stories from Elsewhere” (From Transnational to Translational, CEU Press).

Imola Bülgözdi, Ph.D. (2010), Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest, is Assistant Professor at the University of Debrecen, Hungary. Her latest thematically relevant publication, "Spatiality in the Cyber-World of William Gibson" is available in Cityscapes of the Future: Urban Spaces in Science Fiction (Brill).