Lecture: "Spatial Perception and Genre Borders"

As part of the European NetIAS Lecture Series on 22 October 2020 Merja Polvinen talked about: How do readers imagine the places and spaces of fiction?

How do readers imagine the places and spaces of fiction? What kinds of qualities of text encourage us to generate spatial imaginations, and what makes such imaginations "vivid"? What happens when texts turn our assumptions and imaginings inside out? Merja Polvinen approached these questions via China Miéville's conceptual thriller The City & The City (2009), a story of two urban communities that maintain a border as unassailable as the Berlin Wall, but which consists only of conceptual and perceptual actions.

The lecture wasa ZOOM online event and could be accessed: European NetIAS Lecture ZOOM