Aerial Archives

这个项目研究了美国人的空气和种族之间的联系，以揭示在观看、描绘和思考空中的转变是如何导致美国人(特别是非裔美国人)文学的行星想象中的种族和人类的场地发生变化的。空中俯瞰帮助改变了考古学、地质学、城市规划和社会学，在这些领域，它的使用显示出显著的发展。这个项目借鉴和背离了最近关于空气的研究，如杰森·威姆斯的《草原上的谷仓风暴》、索尼娅·邓佩尔曼的《想象的飞行》和卡伦·卡普兰的《空中余波》。我在这里感兴趣的是，转向空灵如何会导致文学和文学研究的转变。换句话说，我们怎么才能把空气作为一种文学和批评实践来建立理论呢？在这个项目的第二年，我通过观察非裔美国剧作家洛林·汉斯伯里(Lorraine Hansberry)的作品，探索了随着原子弹空投而诞生的黑色核太平洋及其启发式文学谱系，他评论了进口的日本电影《广岛》(Hiroshima)。我想到了汉斯伯里对这个小星球的描绘，这个星球被轰炸的威胁所困扰，母亲、胎儿和植物为生存而挣扎(《阳光下的葡萄干》)，以及她的后核浩劫戏剧(花有什么用？)。

This project examines the links between American aeriality and race to reveal how a shift in seeing, picturing, and thinking of the aerial, has caused corollary shifting grounds for race―and the human race―in the planetary imagination of American (in particular African American) literature. The aerial view has helped change archaeology, geology, town planning, and sociology, fields where its use has shown significant development. This project draws on and departs from recent studies on aeriality such as Jason Weems' Barnstorming the Prairies, Sonja Dumpelmann's Flights of Imagination, and Caren Kaplan's Aerial Aftermaths. My interest here is in asking how the turn to aeriality can lead to a shift in literature and literary studies. To put the question slightly differently: How can one theorize about aeriality as a literary and critical practice?During the second year of the project, I explored the black nuclear Pacific that was born with the aerial dropping of the atom bomb and its heuristic literary genealogy, by looking at the work of African American playwright Lorraine Hansberry, who reviewed the imported Japanese film Hiroshima. I considered Hansberry’s portrait of the kitchenette planet, haunted by threats of bombing, where mothers, a fetus, and a plant struggle for survival (A Raisin in the Sun) and her post-nuclear holocaust play (What Use Are Flowers?).