Mobility and the Humanities

Pearce, Lynne and Merriman, Peter (2018) Mobility and the Humanities. Routledge, London and New York. ISBN 9780815377450

Abstract

Over the past twenty years there has been something of a 'mobilities turn' across many disciplines in the social sciences. This book charts the increasing influence this turn is having on scholars in the arts and humanities, tracing the importance of questions and feelings of movement to scholars and practitioners across fields such as literary studies, historical geography, history, poetry anf film. The book outlines what a mobilities turn might look like in the arts and humanities, tracing a geneaolgy of humanities engagements with themes of movement and mobility, and examining the different methods and textual sources humanities scholars have deployed. The book is uniquely positioned to speak to two audiences: mobilities scholars in the social sciences interested in learning more about how literary and cultural texts may be incorporated into their research, and researchers in the humanities who have only recently discovered that their thematic, or conceptual, interest in movement and mobiltiy speaks directly to theories and and philosophies that have circulated in the social sciences. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of the Mobilities journal and the book is prefaced by a substantial introduction by the editors.