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James Crain, California State University, Northridge.
"This is the most interesting film book I have read in years. . . . an excellent book that is consistently interesting, theoretically smart, and a pleasure to read. [Film, Mobility and Urban Space is] a serious contribution to (and intervention within) film studies (and other disciplines)." Ben Highmore, Professor of Cultural Studies, University of Sussex, 2011.
"This book gives a detailed map of what has been done recently in relevant fields of study. Roberts’s use of a perspective from cinematic geography provides a unique possibility to study the city as built on mobility and as constituted by multiple connections, and to trace the image of the “city-in-film” both in the past and in the future." Transfers 3 (2), 2013.
"The essays are largely compelling and thoughtful, addressing the interdisciplinary theme of the book with creativity and aplomb... Just as they turn towards a theoretically diverse understanding of mapping, the contributions offer a number of thought provoking methodological and pedagogical interpellations of use to anyone interested in using maps conscientiously in research or in the classroom. What this symbiosis brings to our understanding of mapping and their cultures is a welcome addition to a bias towards geographic or cartographic understanding of maps, and a necessary reminder that developments in digital media and the geoweb are certainly not the only ways to comprehend maps and the work they do in new and novel ways." Progress in Human Geography 38 (2), 2014.
"Mapping Cultures offers a collection of innovative studies and theoretical essays, each confronting the diffusion of cartographic method and rhetoric throughout humanities and social science research over the past two decades. . . . [the book] is brimming with insight into the emergent mapping practices and vocabularies by which we might better resist authoritarian, anti-democratic practices, which themselves do work through mapping. And it helps clear a path by which researchers in the humanities and social sciences alike might better understand and express that ‘‘it is not so much what people do with maps as it is what maps do with people’’ (Wood, p. 300). For this alone, the book is an important bridge between the relatively recent innovations of critical cartography, in particular, and a host of other fields just as recently innovated by the methods and metaphors of cartography in general." Cartographica 48 (2), 2013.
"The book closes with a call for a more explicit critical reorientation towards mapping, and map use – a project of the anthropology of cartography (D. Wood). This call seems to be still valid and one can admit that Mapping Cultures: Place, Practice, Performance is a significant step towards achieving the goal. Readers from different disciplines will find valuable contributions – both theoretical and empirical – in the collection. For a tourism researcher or student, the book is thought-provoking for several reasons, not only because of the enhancing awareness of cartography in relation to areas such as cinema, music, travel..." Tourism, Culture and Communication 12, 2013.
"The volume offers a multidisciplinary reappraisal of “the liminal” as a geographical concept, and is a refreshing mix of contributions from scholars at different stages of their research careers. . . . The rich mix of contributions and thought-provoking questions raised makes Liminal Landscapes a highly-accessible book for those who may be unfamiliar with the concepts in discussion, while challenging those more familiar with the literature." Transfers 3 (2), 2013.
"[Liminal Landscapes] reassesses coastal areas as simply sites of tourism, leisure and consumption and related ideas of the ludic, consumption and the carnivalesque and broadens the concept of liminality beyond that of tourism, migration and pilgrimage. . . . [contributors] revisit and remap the concept of liminality using more contemporary developments and theorists in the study of place, space and mobility such as de Certeau as well as develop new insights and perspectives." Tourism Management 38, 2013.
"The City and the Moving Image brings together scholars from film and architecture backgrounds in a collection of case studies which eschew the usual suspects (such as film noir) for a startlingly varied and original range of material... There is a refreshing eclecticism in the kinds of film covered in this book. . . . As a central interest in film studies, the experience of city life and its spaces can lead to more grounded, historicized analysis and a political reinvigoration of the discipline. This book contains promising glimpses of such an engagement, and showcases some of the myriad forms it might take." Screen 52 (4), 2011.
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