Navigating the necropolis: Urban corpses, metropolitan mobility and narratives of crime and terror

Megha Anwer, Purdue University

Abstract

This project charts an extended representational history of urban violence, focusing in particular on narratives of crime and terror. The study begins in mid-nineteenth century England with the emergence of the sensation novel and concludes with a study of the contemporary moment's embroilment with the "War on Terror" in the post-9/11 global context. What unifies this capacious and multi-contextual examination is not just a general engagement with forms of violence, but in particular the closely interfaced manner in which modern narratives of violence intersect with ideas of the urban. ^ My dissertation, then, is propelled by two interrelated concerns. First, it undertakes an exploration of some of the significant ways in which literary/visual narratives of crime and terror straddle the urban. Here I ask: how does the encounter between metropolitan topographies and violent texts contribute to new cognitions of urban spatiality? Second, I examine how crime-and-terror ridden urban spaces, as represented in literature, photograph and film, strategically reconfigure mobility for both real and fictional metropolitan subjects. I specifically consider the urban perambulations of two population groups that occupy the end poles of the study's diachronic spread - Victorian women in nineteenth-century London, and Muslim men in the context of the "War on Terror."^

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Emily Allen, Purdue University, Aparajita Sagar, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Literature|Film studies

COinS