Mobility Studies: A New Direction in Spatial Literary Studies

Abstract

This chapter is a systematic and theoretical study on mobilities in American literature, including the research methods and the significance of such study. LIU Ying holds that the “mobility turn” of the twenty-first century has drawn enthusiastic attention from literary studies, and argues that mobility is the essential feature of American culture, and that American literature’s representation of mobility is mainly based on the model of body-space-mobility, with mobility media (transport technology and transport infrastructure) and mobility politics as the two basic dimensions. According to Liu, the significance of Mobility Literary Studies is: on the micro level, it focuses on the embodiment of mobility and sees mobility as spatial practice of the body; on the macro level, it reveals the interplay between mobility and literature, namely, the changes in narrative structure and literary genre impacted by the transformation of mobility technology and infrastructure on the one hand and, on the other, a series of ways in which literature functions, such as observing mobility evolution, revealing mobility politics, participating in mobility discourse, and intervening mobility practice.