Imagining Spaces and Places - Hardcover

Imagining Spaces and Places seeks to produce an interdisciplinary dialogue between art history and literature studies and other fields of cultural analysis that work with the concepts of space, place and various "scapes", such as cityscapes, bodyscapes, mindscapes and memoryscapes, as well as the more familiar landscapes. The volume was inspired by new lines of study that underline the experiential and multidimensional aspects of spaces. We explore how art, literature or urban spaces forge "scapes" by imposing or suggesting aesthetic, evaluative or ideological orderings and perceptual as well as emotive perspectives on the "raw material" or on previous ways of spatial worldmaking. We look at the role of cultural and artistic renderings of space in relation to everyday experiences of spaces. We examine how the experiences of places are mediated in various art forms and other cultural discourses or practices and how these discourses contribute to the understanding of particular places and also to understanding space in more general terms. Imagining Spaces and Places is addressed to scholars and teachers working at the intersection of cultural and spatial analyses, as well as to their undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Dr Saija Isomaa is a University Lecturer in Finnish Literature at the University of Tampere. Her research interests include genre theory, historical poetics and moral emotions in literature. Pirjo Lyytikainen is a Professor of Finnish Literature at the University of Helsinki and the Director of the Finnish Doctoral Programme for Literary Studies. She is an expert on Finnish national romanticism and symbolism. Her theoretical interests centre on genres of literary world-making. Kirsi Saarikangas is a Professor of Art History at the University of Helsinki. She has authored and edited several books and published widely on the relationship of built space and gender, art historical theories and methods, as well as Finnish cultural history. Her current research interests are in urban nature as well as in questions of home, nature and gender in the lived suburban spaces from the 1950s to the 1970s. Renja Suominen-Kokkonen is an Adjunct Professor and the Senior Lecturer in Art History at the University of Helsinki, as well as the Director of the University's Finnish Doctoral Programme for Art History. She has published monographs and articles on the formation of the architectural profession in Finland and on early women architects. Her research includes articles and a monograph on modern architecture, especially on the collaboration between Aino and Alvar Aalto, and an edited volume on the history of art historical research in Finland.