Cartographies of New York and Other Postwar American Cities: Art, Literature and Urban Spaces explores phenomena of urban mapping in the discourses and strategies of a variety of postwar artists and practitioners of space: Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg, Vito Acconci, Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert Smithson, Rebecca Solnit, Matthew Buckingham, contemporary Situationist projects. The distinctive approach of the book highlights the interplay between texts and site-oriented practices, which have often been treated separately in critical discussions. Monica Manolescu considers spatial investigations that engage with the historical and social conditions of the urban environment and reflect on its mediated nature. Cartographic procedures that involve walking and surveying are interpreted as unsettling and subversive possibilities of representing and navigating the postwar American city. The book posits mapping as a critical nexus that opens up new ways of studying some of the most important postwar artistic engagements with New York and other American cities.

Autorentext

Monica Manolescu is Associate Professor of English at the University of Strasbourg, France. She has published a study of Vladimir Nabokov's geographies and co-authored a companion to Lolita. She has also written articles on 20th-century and contemporary American literature and art.

Inhalt
Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 Walking with Poe: The Man of the Crowd from text to street

The legacies of the flâneur

Vanishing point: from Poe to Buckingham

New forms of following: Poe, the metropolis and virtual communities

Chapter 3 Transitions: Happenings and beyond Into the streets: genealogies of urban mapping &nb...