Aerial Geographies: mobilities, subjects, visualities

The proposed research will enable the completition of a book entitled Aerial Geographies: mobilities, subjects, visualities. The volume will address the impact of the aeroplane and its spaces upon the human subject. Previous research upon the aeroplane has taken various forms. Significant volumes have addressed the relationship between aviation and popular culture; the impact of the aeroplane on war; or, indeed, the inhabitation of the sites and spaces of the aeroplane such as the airport terminal. However, many of these studies do so with two main shortcomings. Firstly, they lack an understanding of how the aeroplane and its impacts are experienced by a fleshy, bodily subject - going beyond the realms of pictoral imagery or the visual spectacle of flight. Furthermore, they overlook how the imagination of this subject has been conceived-of and calculated in order that it might be controlled or transformed. Secondly, they have tended to ignore the geographies the aeroplane constitutes and is composed of; from the terminal, to the aircraft cabin, from airspace to the decimated spaces below. This proposed research will enable the investigator to finish the book Aerial Geographies: a research monograph aimed at attending to these problems through detailed and diverse case-studies in both historical and contemporary time-frames, and different geographical contexts.