Transnational Railway Cultures

Benjamin Fraser is Professor of Spanish in the College of Humanities at the University of Arizona. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Urban Cultural Studies and co-editor of Trains, Mobility and Culture (2012) and Trains, Literature and Culture (2012).

” [This] edited volume will be of interest to historians of technology as it engages with concepts usually analyzed by the discipline. The notion of techno-scientific progress (and its persistence) is the most visible (with trains assuming the role of icon of modernity, contrasting with the backwardness embodied in characters and landscapes surrounding them).” • Technology and Culture“Using interdisciplinary methods, the stimulating essays in this collection consider the ways that a wide variety of cultural texts represent the experience of train travel across national borders.” • Sunny Stalter-Pace, Auburn University“A welcome addition to the growing scholarship on the cultural history of the railway, expanding the scope of inquiry geographically and culturally. All in all, a fascinating exploration of trains, cultures, nations, and passengers confronting borders, mobility, and migration.” • Anna Despotopoulou, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

• IntroductionBenjamin Fraser and Steven SpaldingChapter 1. The Railway Arts: Sound and Space Beyond BordersAimée BoutinChapter 1 AppendixChapter 2. The Sonic Force of the Machine Ensemble: Transnational Objectification in Steve Reich’s Different Trains (1988)Benjamin FraserChapter 3. A Genealogy of Apocalyptic Trains: Snowpiercer and Its Precursors in the Transnational Literature of TransportJohn D. SchwetmanChapter 4. Dangerous Borders: Modernization and the Gothic Mode in Horror Express (1972) and Howl (2015)Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns, and Juan JuvéChapter 5. Anachronism, Ambivalence, and (Trans)National Self-reference: Tracking the English Literary Chunnel from 1986 onHeather JoyceChapter 6. Crossing Borders On and Beyond the Train in Joan of Arc of Mongolia (1989)Steven D. SpaldingChapter 7. The Cosmopolitan Writer: Exploring Representations on the Underground Railways of Buenos Aires and Paris through Julio CortázarDhan Zunino SinghChapter 8. Literary Railway Bazaars: Transnational Discourses of Difference and Nostalgia in Contemporary IndiaAbhishek ChatterjeeChapter 9. Memories of Trains and Trains of Memory: Journeys from Past-Futures to Present-Pasts in El Tren de la Memoria (2005)Araceli Masterson-AlgarChapter 10. Nord-Sud: The Parisian Metro and Transnational Avant-Garde Artistic Mobilities and Movements in Early Twentieth-Century ParisScott D. JuallConclusion: Mind the GapBenjamin Fraser and Steven D. Spalding