CFP

CALL FOR PAPERS

Maps in American Literature, 15^th-21^st c.

 International symposium

April 1-3, 2026
ENS de Lyon, France

Organized by Aurore Clavier (Université Paris Cité), Monica Manolescu (University of Strasbourg, USIAS), Julien Nègre (ENS de Lyon, IUF) and Pauline Pilote (Université Bretagne Sud).

Keynote speaker: Martin Brückner, Professor at the University of Delaware and Director of the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture (WPAMC).

Maps have long shaped the American literary imagination—from Jefferson’s maps of Virginia to Melville's whale charts, from contemporary authors like Lauret Savoy and John Keene, who explore what ancient cartographic documents reveal or conceal about American history, to Indigenous counter-mapping reclamations like Joy Harjo’s poetic anthology. Yet while maps have served as crucial sources of information, inspiration, and authority, their material presence in literary studies remains surprisingly underexplored. For several decades now, literary studies have embraced the language of mapping and spatiality, leading to metaphorical interpretations of texts as cultural maps. However, this "cartographic turn" (Brückner) has paradoxically sidelined actual maps.

This symposium seeks to uncover these often overlooked influences, examining how specific maps have shaped both the form and content of American literature. By “maps,” we refer here to cartographic documents of real-world spaces, focusing specifically on those that exist outside or alongside the texts themselves —whether preexisting maps that writers engaged with or maps produced for or after publication. This excludes maps of fictional spaces such as Sherwood Anderson’s map of Winesburg, Ohio, or Faulkner’s map of Yoknapatawpha County. By "American literature," we mean the works emerging from what would become the United States, taking into account its colonial past prior to nationhood, as well as its transatlantic, transpacific, hemispheric, and global dimensions. We particularly welcome proposals from scholars of literature who have come across maps in their research on specific texts, ranging from ancient maps preserved in writers’ archives to modern digital maps, as well as atlases.

The symposium introduces a dynamic format that emphasizes the materiality of maps. Presenters will have the option to engage with full-scale reproductions of their source maps, transforming traditional presentations into interactive workshops. These maps will then feature in a 2-month exhibition at the Diderot Library (ENS de Lyon), alongside a permanent online exhibition. The event will also include visits to Lyon's cartographic archives.

We welcome papers exploring the interactions between American texts/authors and actual cartographic documents, from the 15^th century to the present day. Possible topics may include (but are not limited to):

• Maps as tools of knowledge: how texts position themselves in relation to the supposed accuracy and authority of maps, and their role in shaping the literary imagination.
• Maps as political objects and instruments of colonization or reclamation: how texts relate to maps to negotiate issues of territoriality, appropriation, separation (borders), and erasure (such as the replacement of place names). How do Eurocentric cartographic practices and conventions interact with, or challenge, other Indigenous or diasporic mapping traditions, and how are these dynamics represented and challenged in literature?
• Maps as visual and material documents: how the visual language and materiality of maps—both Euro-American and Indigenous—influence textual or literary forms, including novels, poems, plays, and other media.
• Maps as interfaces of environmental awareness: how interactions between maps and texts contribute to a heightened visibility of the other-than-human world, either deliberately or indirectly.
• Gender, ethnicity, and racialization in map use: how maps and their literary representations intersect with issues of masculinity, domesticity, and the racialization of space.
• Book history, textual studies, and archival contexts: how the presence of maps in literary archives or within book history shapes interpretations of American literature, highlighting evolving cultural attitudes toward the relationship between maps and texts.

Submission Details:
Please submit a 300-word abstract and a brief bio to maps2026@sciencesconf.org before June 15, 2025.

Because the symposium will be funded by French institutions including Institut Universitaire de France and ENS de Lyon, those invited to present papers will be asked to commit to the symposium dates by submitting a separate document of commitment.

Notifications of acceptance will be sent by July 15, 2025.

Please visit https://maps2026.sciencesconf.org/ for future updates.

Images on this page:

Header: Matthew Fontaine Maury, Sea Drift and Whales, 1857. David Rumsey Map Collection: https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/s/d92455

Background: William T. Hornaday (William Temple), Map Illustrating the Extermination of the American Bison, 1889. Cornell University – PJ Mode Collection of Persuasive Cartography: https://digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:3293847