Space, Landscape, and Culture in 20th and 21st Century Anglo-American Literature
Period: 2025–2026
The research team explores literary representations of the relationship of people to place and space
Team members:
Team Leader: doc. Mgr. Šárka Bubíková, Ph.D.
Researchers: Mgr. Olga Roebuck, Ph.D., M. Litt., PhDr. Ladislav Vít, Ph.D., Mgr. Michal Kleprlík, Ph.D., Mgr. Petra Kalavská, Ph.D., Mgr. Petra Kohlová
Project description:
In recent decades, literary criticism and other areas of the humanities have moved away from the traditional focus on temporal aspects of the material under study and have increasingly focused on issues related to space. The so-called spatial turn represents an interdisciplinary change that no longer perceives space as a mere void or passive background to social events but as an active and significant component. The spatial dimension is closely linked to a range of social, cultural, and political phenomena, including literary renditions of nationalism and cosmopolitan society, local and global culture, imperialism, urbanization, the Anthropocene, environmental themes, the relationship between humans and the environment, developments in the perception of nature, gender (in)equality and the challenges of digital space. The team's research areas include:
- anthropocentric and ecocentric concepts of landscape in literature;
- the literary image of anchoring personal identity through a return to the physical or meditative experience of a landscape;
- territorial contexts of the so-called "culture wars" and the role of space in the formation of cultural identity;
- the relationship between place and violence in a variety of literary genres.
Keywords: landscape; space; place; non-place (non-lieu) in literature; anthropocentric and ecocentric approach to space; space and identity; culture war; space and violence
