Maritime Poetics

In the past fifty years, port cities around the world have experienced considerable changes to their morphologies and their identities. The increasing intensification of global networks and logistics, and the resulting pressure on human societies and earthly environments have been characteristic of the rise of a »planetary age«. This volume argues that contemporary artistic practices and critical poetics trace an alternate construction of the imaginaries and aspirations of our present societies at the crossroads of sea and land - taking into account complex pasts and interconnected histories, transnational flux, as well as material and immaterial borders.

Gabriel N. Gee holds a PhD in contemporary art history from the Université Paris X Nanterre (2008). He teaches contemporary art history and theory atFranklin University. His current research interests include 20th century British and Irish art, the changing representations and imaginaries of port cities in the second half of the 20th century, as well as interconnected global histories. He is co-founder of the TETI group, for Textures and Experiences of Trans-Industriality (www.tetigroup.org)
Caroline Wiedmer holds a PhD in comparative literature from Princeton University (1994). She teaches comparative literature, film studies, and cultural studies at Franklin University. Her research interests include memory studies, documentary film, environmental humanities, law and culture, spatiality, and the workings of narrative in multiple domains of cultural, legal and intellectual life.