Trains, Literature and Culture: Reading and Writing the Rails delves into the rich connections between rail travel and the creation of cultural products from short stories to novels, from photographs to travel guides, and from artistic manifestos of the avant-garde to Freuds psychology. Each of the contributions engages in critical readings of textual or visual representations of trains across a wide spectrum of time periods and traditionsfrom English and American to Mexican, West African and European literary cultures. By turns trope, metaphor, and emblem of technological progress, these textual and visual representations of the train serve at times to index racial and gender inequalities, to herald the arrival of a nations independence, and at still others to evince the trauma of industrialization. In each instance, the figure of the train emerges as a complex narrative form engaged by artists who were Reading& Writing the Rails as a way of assessing the competing discursive investments of cultural modernity.

Steven D. Spalding is assistant professor of French at Christopher Newport University.Benjamin Fraseris assistant professor of Spanish at The College of Charleston, South Carolina. He is also the author of the monographsDisability Studies and Spanish Culture(Liverpool UP, forthcoming),Henri Lefebvre and the Spanish Urban Experience (Bucknell UP, 2011) andEncounters with Bergson(ism) in Spain (U North Carolina P, 2010) as well as the editor and translator ofDeaf History and Culture in Spain (Gallaudet UP, 2009).

IntroductionBenjamin Fraser and Steven SpaldingPart I. Race, Class, and GenderChapter 1: Railroad Blues: Crossing the Tracks of Gender, Class and Race Inequities in the Blues and Ann Petrys The StreetClaudia MayChapter 2: Nineteenth-Century German Women Writers on the RailroadBeth MuellnerPart II. Politics and PoeticsChapter 3: Technology Transfer, the Railway and Independence in Ousmane Sembènes Les Bouts de bois de DieuRoxanna CurtoChapter 4: Futurist Trains: Aesthetics and Subjectivity in the Italian Avant-GardeAlessio LerroPart III. Visual CulturesChapter 5: Sublime Hieroglyphics: The Pacific Coast Views 1867-1872 of Carleton WatkinsScott PalmerChapter 6: Modernity, Anxiety and the Development of a Popular Railway Landscape Aesthetic, 1809-1879Matt ThompsonPart IV. New Critical TransfersChapter 7: Mapping Memory Through the Railway Network: Reconsidering Freuds Metaphors from the Project for a Scientific Psychology to Beyond the Pleasure PrincipleClaudie MassicotteChapter 8: Killer Trains and Thrilling Travels: the Spectacle of Mobility in Zola and ProustSteven D. SpaldingPart V. Economics and PowerChapter : Class and Counterfeiting during the Porfiriato: Gutiérrez Nájeras The Streetcar NovelJosé Eduardo GonzálezChapter 10: Train, Trestle, Ticker: Railroad and Region in Frank Norriss The Octopus and María Amparo Ruiz de Burton's The Squatter and The DonMichael Velez