The session is the result of a dialogue between the group “Geografia e letteratura” (Geography and Literature) of the Associazione dei Geografi Italiani (AGeI) and the group “Pensamiento Geográfico” (Geography Thinking) of the Asociación de Geógrafos Españoles (AGE). Participation at EUGEO offers the chance to enhance collaboration and international academic exchange on literary geography topics. The aim of the session is therefore to welcome contributions that present different research methods and approaches in the field of literary geography. In this way, the session also enables to investigate issues related to the European cultural geographies. The potential of a fruitful dialogue between geography and literature has been widely investigated internationally, as demonstrated by a large body of literature (Brosseau 1995; Hones 2022; Neal 2015; Pocock 1981; Rosemberg 2016; Rossetto 2014). Within this intense and never-ending debate we can trace the distinction between literary geography (focused on analysing texts), aimed at studying representations of the spatial dimension, and a geography of literature aimed at understanding the relationships between literary works and the territorial contexts that produced them (Brosseau and Cambron 2003). In these works, the literary text is thus configured as an active subject in a process of social construction of reality through its capacity to contribute to the creation of shared images of spatial contexts. It cannot therefore be considered only as a source for geographical studies, but also as a subject through which a process of signification is started, or reiterated, aimed at the construction of a socially shared point of view on the complexity of geographies.

The session will therefore welcome theoretical and applied research contributions aimed at fostering discussion on literary genres, representations and spaces in which literary geography offers challenging and innovative opportunities. Specific attention will be given to contributions proposing methodological insights aimed at deepening the research fields most suitable for the geo-literary investigation of the cultural geographies of Europe.