Global Kaleidoscopes: East-West Cities in Literature (Routledge Studies in Urbanism and the City)

This book introduces the concept of the East-West city to explore new urban identities that challenge binary constructions between Eastern and Western cultures through the literary study of global cities.It does so by reimagining our relational connections to time and space across diverse cultural, geographic, and literary contexts. In the twentieth century, notions such as hybridity, third space, and border theory helped challenge rigid, essentialized views of identity and power.However, the twenty-first century invites us to elaborate on these foundational theories through an understanding of how interactions are becoming even more complex, with multiple, accelerated, and coalescing systems and identities occurring simultaneously.The East-West city is a site upon which travelers, immigrants, exiles, pilgrims, and refugees transcribe their identities and form new ways to map and articulate “home.” Through a critical analysis of literary urban studies, Global Kaleidoscopes explores how