If people are geographical beings, what can fiction tell us about this truth? This book explores how literature can help us understand the nature of the relations between people and place, how humans create connections between their identities and their geographies, and how these can be threatened and lost. Literature is an important, if unusual, way to explore these relations. At once centred in imagination and ideas, fiction is also indelibly connected to, as well as influenced by, the geographies in which it is set. As this book argues, the relationship between fiction and location is so important that it is often difficult to know which is imagined and which is real. Exploring the relations between people and place through fiction writing set in Wales, Page and Place garners poetic insight into how places are written into our stories, and how these stories take and make the places around us. The book introduces the notion of ‘plot’ to describe the complex entanglement between fiction and geography, and to help understand the role that places play in defining human identity.

The Routledge Handbook of Literary Geographies provides a comprehensive overview of recent research and a range of innovative ways of thinking literature and geography together. It maps the history of literary geography and identifies key developments and debates in the field. Written by leading and emerging scholars from around the world, the 38 chapters are organised into six themed sections, which consider: differing critical methodologies; keywords and concepts; literary geography in the light of literary history; a variety of places, spaces, and landforms; the significance of literary forms and genres; and the role of literary geographies beyond the academy. Presenting the work of scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds, each section offers readers new angles from which to view the convergence of literary creativity and geographical thought. Collectively, the contributors also address some of the major issues of our time including the climate emergency, movement and migration, and the politics of place. Literary geography is a dynamic interdisciplinary field dedicated to exploring the complex relationships between geography and literature. This cutting-edge collection will be an essential resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students in both Geography and Literary Studies, and scholars interested in the evolving interface between the two disciplines.

Literary Geography provides an introduction to work in the field, making the interdiscipline accessible and visible to students and academics working in literary studies and human geography, as well as related fields such as the geohumanities, place writing and geopoetics. Emphasising the long tradition of work with literary texts in human geography, this volume: provides an overview of literary geography as an interdiscipline, which combines aims and methods from human geography and literary studies explains how and why literary geography differs from spatially-oriented critical approaches in literary studies reviews geographical work with literary texts from the late 19th century to the present day includes a glossary of key terms and concepts employed in contemporary literary geography. Accessible and clear, this comprehensive overview is an essential guide for anyone interested in learning more about the history, current activity and future of work in the interdiscipline of literary geography.

Despite the fact that the sea covers 70 per cent of the Earth’s surface, and is integral to the workings of the world, it has been largely neglected or perceived as marginal in modern consciousness. This edited collection disrupts notions of the sea as ’other’, as foreign and featureless, through specific, situated accounts which highlight the centrality of the sea for the individuals concerned. Bringing together academics who combine scholarly expertise with lived experiences on, in and with the sea, it examines humans’ relationships with the sea. Through the use of auto-ethnographic accounting, the contributors reflect on how the sea has shaped their sense of identity, belonging and connection. They examine what it is to be engaged with the sea, and narrate their lived, sentient, corporeal experiences. The sea is a cultural seascape just as it is physical reality. The sea shapes us and we, in turn, attempt to ’shape it’ as we construct various versions of it that reflect our on-going and mutable relationship with it. The use of embodied accounts, as a way of conveying lived-experiences, and the integration of relevant theoretical frames for understanding the broader cultural implications provide new opportunities to understand seascapes.

Whilst being an ambiguous and contested concept, sustainability has become one of the twenty-first century’s most pervasive ideas, as humanity’s increasing impact on the environment, as well as increasing social and economic inequalities, have local and global consequences. Surfing is a globally recognised cultural phenomenon whose unique connection with nature and rapid expansion into a multibillion pound industry offers exciting synergies for exploring various dimensions of sustainability. This book is the first to bring together the world’s foremost experts on the themes of sustainability and surfing. Drawing upon cutting edge theory and research, this book offers multidisciplinary perspectives and methodological approaches on the social, environmental and economic components of sustainable surfing. Contributions provide unique discussions that bridge the gap between theory and practice, exploring topics such as sustainable surf tourism, surf-econometrics, surf activism, surfing governance, the surfing industry, and technological advancements. Each chapter produces in-depth insights to provide foundational insights of the relationship between sustainability and surfing. This book will appeal to multiple audiences in different disciplines and sectors. Practitioners will benefit from the insights presented in this volume, while both undergraduate and postgraduate students will find this volume an invaluable companion, including those working in geography, environmental studies, sport sciences, and leisure and tourism studies.

This book proposes a novel creative research practice in geography based on comics. It presents a transdisciplinary approach that uses a set of qualitative visual methods and extends from within the geohumanities across literary spatial studies, comics, urban studies, mobility studies, and beyond. Written by a geographer-cartoonist, the book focuses on ‘narrative geographies’ and embraces a geocritical and relational approach to examine comic book geographies in pursuit of a growing interest in creative, art-based experimental methods in the geohumanities. It explores comics-based research through interconnections between art and geography and through theoretical and methodological contributions from scholars working in the fields of the social sciences, humanities, literary geographies, mobilities, comics, literary studies, and urban studies, as well as from visual artists, comics authors, and art practitioners. Comics are valuable objects of geographical interest because of their spatial grammar. They are also a language particularly suited to geographical analysis, and the ‘geoGraphic novel’ offers a practice of research that has the power to assemble and disassemble new spatial meanings. The book thus explores how the ‘geoGraphic novel’ as a verbo-visual genre allows the study of geographical issues, composes geocentred stories, engages wider and non-specialist audiences, promotes geo-artistic collaboration, and works as a narrative intervention in urban contexts. Through a practice-based approach and the internal perspective of a geographer-cartoonist, the book provides examples of how geoGraphic fieldwork is conducted and offers analysis of the processes of ideation, composition, and dissemination of geoGraphic narratives.

This book outlines how the theoretical ideas, empirical foci, and methodological techniques of cultural geography make sense of the ‘culture wars’ that define our time. It is on the battleground of culture that our opportunities, rights, and futures are determined and Understanding Cultural Geography showcases how this discipline can be used to understand these battles and how we can engage in them. Through doing so, the book not only introduces the reader to the rich and complex history of cultural geography, but also the key terms on which the discipline is built. From these insights, the text approaches place as an ‘ongoing composition of traces’, highlighting the dynamic and ever-changing nature of the world around us, and what our role can be in transforming it for the better. The third edition has been fully revised and updated to incorporate recent literature and reflect the changing cultural context of its time. Retaining its exciting and innovative structure, the third edition will expand its focus into new areas, including updated chapters on ethnicity and race, and new chapters on gender and the body. This new edition captures not only recent changes in the cultural world, but also the discipline itself, offering the most up-to-date text to understand and engage with the cultural battlegrounds which constitute our lives. Understanding Cultural Geography is the ideal text for students being introduced to the discipline through either undergraduate or postgraduate degree courses. The third edition is an important update to a highly successful text that incorporates a vast foundation of knowledge; it is an invaluable book for lecturers and students.