Textual Life of Airports

Reading the Culture of Flight

Häftad, Engelska, 2013

AvChristopher Schaberg

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This is a book about airport stories. It is about common narratives of airports that circulate in everyday life, and about the secret stories of airports-the strange or hidden narratives that do not always fit into standard ideas of these in-between places. Tales of near disaster, endless delays, dramatic weather shifts, a lost bag that suddenly appears-such stories are familiar accounts of a place that seems to thrive on and recycle its own mythologies. The Textual Life of Airports shows how airports demand to be read. Working at the intersection of literary studies and cultural theory, Schaberg tracks airport stories in American literature, as well as in a range of visual texts (film, airport art, magazine illustrations). It accounts for how airports appear in literature throughout the twentieth-century, while also examining the influx of airport figures in markedly post-9/11 literature and culture. These literary and cultural representations work together to form "the textual life of airports."

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2013-05-09
Mått148 x 226 x 12 mm
Vikt280 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor192
FörlagBloomsbury Publishing Plc
ISBN9781441189684

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Litteraturvetenskap inom Skönlitteratur

Introduction: A Book About Airports / 1. What is Airport Reading? / 2. Work in the Culture of Flight / 3. Detecting the Uncertain Subject of Airport Mysteries / 4. 9/11: Points of Departure / 5. The Airport Screening Complex / 6. Airport Studies: Creative Acts and Critical Thinking / 7. Ecology in Waiting: Airport Passages and Environmental Imagination / 8. Bird Citing / 9. Claiming Baggage / Conclusion / Bibliography / Index

"For most of us, time spent in airports is filled with inconvenience, discomfort, and often explicit insult to our psychological well-being. Reading Christopher Schaberg's The Textual Life of Airports is guaranteed to dispel your tedium and inspire you to join along with him in a rich foray of cultural inquiries about these colossi and the complex narratives they convey. From the canon of airport reading to aesthetic images of baggage, from the resonances of 9/11 to the semiotic absence and presence of birds in the terminals, Schaberg approaches airports with a keen critical energy that will make you welcome your next four-hour layover in Atlanta or your missed connection in Newark as an opportunity to explore his fascinating insights. I have sometimes felt that all the good topics in cultural studies have been exhausted; this book restores my faith that fertile ground remains. I savored every paragraph." -- Randy Malamud, Professor of English, Georgia State University, USA, and author of Reading Zoos: Representations of Animals and Captivity (Macmillan and NYU Press, 1998) and Poetic Animals and Animal Souls (Palgrave 2003).