American Modernism and the Cartographic Imagination

Senior Lecturer in American Studies at the United States Studies Centre Dr Aaron Nyerges is the author of the book, American Modernism and the Cartographic Imagination, published by Cambridge University Press.

This new reading of American modernism examines the cartographic literature of the United States and places it in context of the state's overseas expansion. It stretches the map of US literature across an imperial archipelago of territories, bringing canonical American authors into relation with writers who are comparatively under-represented in modernist studies.

The book argues that literary artists from across US dominion responded to space-dominating technologies of empire and retooled them to imagine counter-cartographies, designs that challenged the official geographies of the United States.