William Least Heat-Moon’s American Travels: Representing Spaces through the American Road Narrative

Alice Carletto

doi:10.31178/INTER.13.27.5

Autori

Alice Carletto NOVA University of Lisbon Autor

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.31178/INTER.13.27.5

Cuvinte cheie:

American road narrative, mobility, ecocriticism, geocriticism

Rezumat

William Least Heat-Moon embarked on a road trip across the United States in 1978, after having lost his job as a professor and after divorcing. With his van, called Ghost Dancing, after Native American ceremonies, Heat-Moon hits the open road for three months, travelling only through the backroads of America, with the intention to find pristine places. These experiences on the road are recounted in his well-known road book Blue Highways: A Journey into America (1982). The aim of this article is to discuss the representation of space—natural and manmade—within Heat-Moon’s Blue Highways, using ecocritical and geocritical studies as a methodological mapping for the analysis. Applying the ecocritical and geocritical approaches will contribute to provide a more comprehensive study on the topic of space, leading also to a reconsideration of the genre of the American road narrative, and consequently, providing new insights on mobilities and space studies.

Biografie autor

Alice Carletto, NOVA University of Lisbon

Alice Carletto is a PhD candidate in Modern Literatures and Cultures at NOVA University of Lisbon. She received a PhD scholarship in 2022 by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT). She holds a BA degree in Modern Languages and Literatures (English and Portuguese) from the Università degli Studi di Torino (Italy). She also holds a MA degree in English and North-American Studies from NOVA University of Lisbon. She concluded her MA studies with a dissertation on the topic of American pastoralism. She has been a collaborator of CETAPS since 2017, a member of the Junior Researcher for Anglo-American Studies, the American Intersection Strand, and the Portuguese Association for Anglo-American Studies. Her main field of research is American Studies; in her PhD research, she is currently investigating the American road narrative genre through an ecocritical and geocritical approach.