Sea Narratives: Cultural Responses to the Sea, 1600-Present explores the relationship between the sea and culture from the early modern period to the present. The collection uses the concept of the ‘sea narrative’ as a lens through which to consider the multiple ways in which the sea has shaped, challenged, and expanded modes of cultural representation to produce varied, contested and provocative chronicles of the sea across a variety of cultural forms within diverse socio-cultural moments. Sea Narratives provides a unique perspective on the relationship between the sea and cultural production: it reveals the sea to be more than simply a source of creative inspiration, instead showing how the sea has had a demonstrable effect on new modes and forms of narration across the cultural sphere, and in turn, how these forms have been essential in shaping socio-cultural understandings of the sea. The result is an incisive exploration of the sea’s force as a cultural presence.

This is the first book dedicated to literary and cultural scholars’ engagement with mobilities scholarship. As such, the volume both advances new theoretical approaches to the study of culture and furthers the recent “humanities turn” in mobilities studies. The book’s scholarship is deeply informed by cultural geography’s vision of a mobilised reconceptualisation of space and place, but also by the contribution of literary scholars in articulating questions of travel, technologies of transport, (post)colonialism and migration through a close engagement with textual materials.  A comprehensive introduction maps pre-histories and emerging directions of this exciting interdisciplinary endeavor while taking up the theoretical and methodological challenges of the burgeoning subfield.  Contributions range across geographical and disciplinary boundaries to address questions of embodied subjectivities, mobility and the nation, geopolitics of migration, and mobilities futures.

Sea Narratives: Cultural Responses to the Sea, 1600-Present explores the relationship between the sea and culture from the early modern period to the present. The collection uses the concept of the ‘sea narrative’ as a lens through which to consider the multiple ways in which the sea has shaped, challenged, and expanded modes of cultural representation to produce varied, contested and provocative chronicles of the sea across a variety of cultural forms within diverse socio-cultural moments. Sea Narratives provides a unique perspective on the relationship between the sea and cultural production: it reveals the sea to be more than simply a source of creative inspiration, instead showing how the sea has had a demonstrable effect on new modes and forms of narration across the cultural sphere, and in turn, how these forms have been essential in shaping socio-cultural understandings of the sea. The result is an incisive exploration of the sea’s force as a cultural presence.

This is the first book dedicated to literary and cultural scholars’ engagement with mobilities scholarship. As such, the volume both advances new theoretical approaches to the study of culture and furthers the recent “humanities turn” in mobilities studies. The book’s scholarship is deeply informed by cultural geography’s vision of a mobilised reconceptualisation of space and place, but also by the contribution of literary scholars in articulating questions of travel, technologies of transport, (post)colonialism and migration through a close engagement with textual materials.  A comprehensive introduction maps pre-histories and emerging directions of this exciting interdisciplinary endeavor while taking up the theoretical and methodological challenges of the burgeoning subfield.  Contributions range across geographical and disciplinary boundaries to address questions of embodied subjectivities, mobility and the nation, geopolitics of migration, and mobilities futures.