Dominika Ferens

Katarzyna Nowak-McNeice

Marcin Tereszewski

Ewa Kębłowska-Ławniczak

This interdisciplinary collection explores the diverse relationships between the frequently ignored and inherently ambiguous hinterlands and their manifestations in literature and culture. Moving away from perspectives that emphasize the marginality of hinterlands and present them as devoid of agency and “cultural currency”, this collection assembles a series of original essays using various modes of engagement to reconceptualize hinterlands and highlight their semiotic complexity. Apart from providing a reassessment of hinterlands in terms of their geocultural significance, this book also explores hinterlands through such concepts as nostalgia, heterotopia, identity formation, habitation, and cognitive mapping, with reference to a wide geographical field. Literary and filmic revisions of familiar hinterlands, such as the Australian outback, Alberta prairie, and Arizona desert, are juxtaposed in this volume with representations of such little-known European hinterlands as Lower Silesia and Ukraine, and the complicated political dimension of First World War internment camps is investigated with regard to Kapuskasing (Ontario). Rural China and the Sussex Downs are examined here as writers’ retreats. Inner-city hinterlands in Haiti, India, Morocco, and urban New Jersey take on new meaning when contrasted with the vast hinterlands of megacities like Johannesburg and Los Angeles. The spectrum of diverse approaches to hinterlands helps to reinforce their multilayered and multivocal nature as spaces that defy clear categorization.

Literary and Cultural Representations of the Hinterlands

Alejandra María Aventín Fontana

This collection gathers a variety of scholars representing various methodological perspectives and applying diverse critical lenses to analyze the idea of borders, borderlands, frontiers, and liminal space, as they are represented in literature and philosophy. The idea of the border and frontier is perhaps more important than ever: under the siege of COVID-19, with shattered illusions of a post-racial world, when a global effort is required as a response to a crisis that does not respect national or regional borders, we need to reconsider what frontiers and borders mean to us, and how to best understand them so that they do not divide, but point to areas of common knowledge, collective experiences, and shared humanity. Drawing upon examples from different continents (Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe) and from diverse specific places (such as the Mexico-US border, or the contested Palestinian frontiers), and using a variety of critical perspectives (evoking Gloria Anzaldua, Jorge Luis Borges, and Edward Said, for instance), this volume explores the idea of frontiers and borders in order to comment on their representations in literature, philosophy, music, and cinema, and on the human condition in general.

On the Edge

Representations and Images of Frontiers and Borders

Agata Zarzycka

Focusing on portrayals of California in popular culture, this collection of new essays traces a central theme of darkness through literature (Toby Barlow, Angela Carter, Joan Didion, Thomas Pynchon, and Claire Vaye Watkins), video games (L.A. Noire), music (Death Grips, Lana Del Rey, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers), TV (True Detective and American Horror Story), and film (Starry Eyes, Southland Tales and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night). Providing insight into the significance of Californian icons, the contributors explore the interplay between positive stereotypes connected to the myth of the Golden State and ambivalent responses to the myth based on social and political power, the consequences of consumerism, transformations of the landscape and the dominance of hyperreality.

Essays on Dystopian Depictions in Popular Culture

A Dark California

"This collection of essays traces a central theme of darkness through literature, video games, music, TV series, and film. The contributors explore the interplay between positive stereotypes connected with the myth of the Golden State, the consequences of consumerism, transformations of the landscape, and the dominance of hyperreality"--

Katarzyna Nowak-McNeice

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