Progressive Geographies

New Perspectives, 01/2019 – full Issue to download

Editorial

1. Über Berlin

Benjamin Tallis

Research Articles

2. Great Expectations: The EU’s Social Role as a Great Power Manager

David M. McCourt & Andrew Glencross

3. The (Small) State of the Union: Assessing the EU’s Ability to Implement Its Global Strategy

Rebecca Pedi

4. The Wrong Critiques: Why Internal Border Controls Don’t Mean the End of Schengen

Markéta Votoupalová

Fora

5. Russia and the World: IMEMO Forecast 2018

Mark Galeotti, Minda Holm, Tuomas Forsberg, Ruth Deyermond & Irina Kobrinskaya

6. Twilight of the Proletariat: Reading Critical Balkanology as Liberal Ideology

Catherine Baker, Nataša Kovačević, Dragan Kujundžić & Rade Zinaić

Cultural Cut

7. Bauhaus Imaginista: Framing Renshichirō Kawakita’s Transcultural Legacy and Pedagogy

Helena Čapková

Thomas Nail, Theory of the Image – OUP, May 2019

We live in an age of the mobile image. The world today is absolutely saturated with images of all kinds circulating around the world at an incredible rate. The movement of the image has never been more extraordinary than it is today. This recent kinetic revolution of the image has enormous consequences not only for the way we think about contemporary art and aesthetics but also for art history as well.

Responding to this historical moment, Theory of the Image offers a fresh new theory and history of art from the perspective of this epoch-defining mobility. The image has been understood in many ways, but it is rarely understood to be fundamentally in motion. The original and materialist approach is what defines Theory of the Image and what allows it to offer the first kinetic history of the Western art tradition. In this book, Thomas Nail further develops his larger philosophy of movement into a comprehensive

“This is an engaging book with a fascinating argument. Thomas Nail stakes out new territory, building a theory from the group up of the image as kinetic” — David Morgan , Duke University

“Thomas Nail’s Theory of the Image is an ambitious and original attempt to re-theorize the material and cognitive dynamics of the image. In this respect, his model is kinetic as opposed to representational, mimetic, or hermeneutical. The book is eminently suitable for use on a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses, in particular, philosophy, cultural theory, and art history.” — John Roberts , University of Wolverhampton

Also next week, I’ll be giving the Fourth Denis Cosgrove Lecture in the GeoHumanities, at the British Academy, 23 May 2019, 6.15pm

The title of the talk is “Shakespearean Landscapes”, and while I will say something about the Shakespearean Territories book, I will be mainly discussing this related but distinct theme.

This lecture explores how Shakespeare’s plays evoke a sense of landscape. Shakespeare’s grasp of specific geographies could be shaky, but his plays are rich with a range of geographical themes, language and detail. Shakespeare lived and wrote at a time of colonial exploration and saw the development of many cartographic, navigational and land-measuring techniques. The lecture builds on the argument of my recent book, Shakespearean Territories, but explores a different yet related geographical theme – that of landscape. This is of course a theme which Denis Cosgrove examined so perceptively. The plays discussed will include some of Shakespeare’s most famous, such as Macbeth and King Lear, and lesser known ones including Timon of Athens.

The lecture is free to attend, but the organisers have asked that people do register beforehand. Full details here.

Coming up next week – 20 May, 3pm book launch for Canguilhem, gloknos/CRASSH, S1, Alison Richard Building, University of Cambridge (with Inanna Hamati-Ataya and Simon Reid-Henry)