Affective Critical Regionalityoffers a new approach to developing a sharper, more nuanced understanding of the relations between place, space, memory and affect. It builds on the authors extensive work on the American West, where he developed the idea of expanded critical regionalism to underline the West as multiple, dynamic and relational; engaged in global / local processes, tensions between the rooted and the routed, and increasingly as relevant to debates around the politics of precarity and vulnerability.This book uses affective critical regionality to enable a re-valuing of the local as a powerful means to appreciate the everyday and the over-looked as vital elements within a more inclusive understanding of how we live. Exploring a variety of cultural materials including fiction, memoir, theory, poetry and film it demonstrates how this approach can deepen our understanding of, and simultaneously provoke new relations with, place. Moving beyond the US context through its use of international theoretical voices and texts, it will show how the concept is applicable to other cultural spheres.

Neil Campbell is Professor of American Studies and Research Manager at the University of Derby, U.K. He has published widely in American Studies, including the booksAmerican Cultural Studies with Alasdair Kean (Routledge, 2011),American Youth Cultures (ed, Edinburgh University Press, 2004) and co-editor ofIssues on Americanisation and Culture(Edinburgh University Press, 2004).His major research project is an interdisciplinary trilogy of books on the contemporary American West. The first two areThe Cultures of the American New West (Edinburgh/Columbia UP, 2000) andThe Rhizomatic West (Nebraska, 2008) and he has just completed the final part,Post-Westerns, on cinematic representation of the New West. He is, with Christine Berberich& Robert Hudson, co-editor ofLand& Identity: Theory, Memory, and Practice (Rodopi, 2012) and with Alfredo Cramerotti co-editor ofPhotocinema (Intellect, 2013).Affective Landscapes also edited with Christine Berberich& Robert Hudson is forthcoming with Ashgate in 2014 as is the special section on affective landscapes in the Journal Cultural Politics.

Introduction: An Expanded Critical Regionalism / 1. From Regionalism to Regionality / 2. Charles Olson: the motion which we call life / 3. D.J. Waldie: Suburban Regionality / 4. Kathleen Stewart: Fictocritical Regionality / 5. Rebecca Solnit: A New Atlas of Emotion / 6. Willy VlautinsNorthline: Fugitive Work / 7. Karen Tei Yamashita: Border Cartographies, Border Refrains / 8. Conclusion: not so much a deficiency as a resource / Bibliography / Index