The conclusion starts with a look back at literary critic Leslie Fiedler’s defense of comics during a nationwide campaign that led to the self-censorship of the so-called Comics Code. Half a century later, the rise of the graphic novel has dispelled most of the prejudices against comics but often at the price of an unduly narrow understanding of the medium. Critiquing the blindspots of existing scholarship on the graphic novel, the author discusses how the digital humanities can contribute to a more expansive conception of this genre. Drawing on important interventions by Stuart Hall and Raymond Williams, this chapter emphasizes the need to analyze the interplay of socioeconomic factors and formal elements. Thus, the conclusion looks at the technical and methodological limitations that characterize the digital humanities at present and envisions future directions for research at the intersection of literary and visual studies.

This chapter explores “constellational form” in Gerald Murnane. It argues that the key continuity in Murnane’s work lies in his associative way of writing, and analyzes the motivations and philosophical convictions underlying this form. It traces these formal continuities across Murnanes work, from his early novel Tamarisk Row (1974) through to his post-hiatus fictions up to Border Districts (2017). It also considers Murnanes “idealism” and probes how this underpins his unique understanding of the ontology of characterological beings and the relationship between implied author and reader.

The background on how the book came to be is delineated with reference to its general structure and key themes, following five key thoroughfares that anchor distinct parts of New Orleans – Royal Street, St. Claude Avenue, Esplanade Avenue, Basin Street, and St.Charles Avenue – with a final chapter on the outskirts of the city.

Weaponizing phone lines to enforce white spaces has proven an effective tool for the passively fearful. In most cases, it lends anonymity, allowing a racially fragile citizen to lodge a complaint and recede into the shadows as armed agents of the State assume responsibility. Akin to keyboard warriors and internet trolls, 911 abusers can lob unsubstantiated attacks and escape involvement or scrutiny themselves. But this type of color line enforcement is a step removed from the action. It relies on a 911 dispatcher and a trained law enforcement officer to act on the frivolous, race-baiting tip. Some white space defenders want to be more involved, to take the law into their own hands under the guise of self-defense. Thanks to gun rights lobbies and state legislatures across the country, now they can. No trend better encapsulates the State’s increasing acquiescence to civilian weaponization of racial fear than Stand Your Ground laws. These laws fly in the face of traditional self-defense doctrine, posing a serious threat to public safety “by encouraging armed vigilantism

Gentrification has become a widespread form of urban transformation during the last decades. While gentrification has been vastly theorised and studied from the point of view of its economic, sociological, cultural or geographical underpinnings, the psychosocial implications of gentrification have been seldom explored. In this chapter, we argue that changing senses of place implicated in gentrification processes can be interpreted not as a mere, even less neutral, effect of capitalist logics of creative destruction of the city, but as one of its main subjective catalysers. Based on the empirical analysis of a study conducted in the neighbourhood of Gràcia (Barcelona, Spain), we discuss the symbolic mechanisms that renew senses of place, transforming them while re-creating them, to channel, re-produce and capture place-based profitable value, i.e. the creative destruction of senses of place. The study advances empirically based knowledge on the ‘semiocapitalist’ processes that reshape sense of place by capitalising on place-related meanings, affect, desire and identification with the urban symbolic environment.

While the term “bohemian” has fallen out of favor, the desire to explore alternative lifestyles that challenge mainstream social expectations remains. Focusing mainly on the Beat Generation writers but including a broad range of other bohemian groups both past and present, this chapter explores the reasons for bohemia’s demise, makes an honest assessment of its shortcomings, and attempts to redeem what is worthwhile from the concept. Despite its paradoxes and problems, there are good reasons to retain a bohemian ideal that brings the contradictions in everyday life into sharper focus, even if the future of bohemia might not be urban. At its best, the bohemian desire to live a fuller life outside society’s margins functions as a utopian gesture that challenges our media-obsessed culture with a focus on the personal and inner-directed. In such a world, bohemia is as difficult to enact as it is necessary for those who want to define life and its possibilities for themselves.

Chapter 9 revisits the republican conception of the citizen, a conception that has been largely muted in modern society in favor of the liberal and ethno-nationalist ideas. In recent years there has been an effort to “revive” republicanism as an alternative to both the consumerism and individualism of liberal citizenship and the unreflective jingoism of ethnic nationalism. Scholars like Michael Sandel have drawn upon the republican tradition of city-state citizenship to call for a renewed commitment to a republican urban citizenship. In this vision, the city would have the means to buffet itself against the forces of global capitalism and the disruptions of gentrification, and its public places – its parks, schools and libraries – would be sites of civic activity where strangers could mingle without being judged either by their identity or their wallet. Unfortunately, however, the republican concern with protecting the city from the world leads it down the path to a quasi-nationalist xenophobia, in which outsiders are ostracized and scapegoated.

Chapter 1 introduces the study with a vignette of a critical case from Yungay, Santiago. There, a group of residents with no prior background in activism, in a city with unsympathetic political institutions and leadership, organized and achieved remarkable and sustained policy impact and stopped planned redevelopment in their neighborhood. The chapter then presents the key questions: How have citizens adapted resistance against urban redevelopment to profound political, social, and technological changes? And under what conditions do they reach their goals? The chapter justifies the focus on struggles against urban redevelopment: Urban redevelopment plays a critical role in contemporary capitalism and has important social and political implications. Investigating the struggles against redevelopment, in turn, can lead to broader insights about contentious politics. Finally, the chapter presents an overview of argument and a plan for the rest of the book.

This chapter examines gentirifcation within New York’s literature, through testimonies of loss, recollection, contestation, reflection and organised opposition. It establishes authenticity as the political project of those who are displaced from their own neighbourhoods, symbolically and spatially, at times violently. This study proposes a critical bird’s-eye-view of such testimonies, both non-fictional and fictional, in order to reinforce the argument that cultural scripts of urbanisation are as compelling and useful in our understanding of cities like New York.

Chapter 2 develops our theory, highlighting how land use regulations and participatory inequalities come together to constrain the supply of new housing. We use a detailed case study of a Catholic Church redevelopment project to illustrate how neighbors opposed to development are able to delay development and reduce what gets built by participating in the planning and permitting process.