Introduction

This Special Section brings together a selection of the most thought-provoking articles presented during two seminars I convened at the 2025 Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Conference in Philadelphia, titled ‘The production of space in literature, cinema, photography, and media’. The seminars sought to place the production of space at the centre of critical inquiry, examining how spatial forms across media are constructed, represented and politicized. The selected articles – spanning modernist literature, postmodern fiction, visual culture, cinema and urban theory – collectively challenge the notion of space as inert or neutral. Instead, they approach space as a generative and contested field through which ideology is articulated, memory is inscribed and bodies are disciplined, surveilled or emancipated. From fog-filled train stations and Ground Zero to the haunted terrains of the American South and the domestic architectures of gendered labour, these contributions foreground the material specificity and symbolic density of spatial formations. Engaging with and extending Henri Lefebvre’s spatial theory, the Special Section offers a critical topography that underscores space as a central vector of narrative, resistance and political imagination.