In recent decades the conceptualization of space and place as social constructs, rather than static settings has received significant attention and has been re-evaluated with an emphasis on the cultural, social and political practice. This shift moves away from regarding space as fixed, unchanging container towards a realization that space is always inextricably linked with social practice and cultural signification. Thus, the study of spatial practices interrogates human action in different spaces, human agency in the production of space, and space in its capacity to prompt human action. By focusing on human action in manipulating and subverting space, and thereby creating multiple coexisting and overlapping spatialities, the interest also shifts from semiotic correlations in cultural expressions to events, practices, material and medial embodiment of culture. This collection of essays approaches the study of space and place from a historically inclusive perspective; it gives new insights into historical shifts and changes in the construction and perception of space as well as historical developments and diachonicity of literary, social, and architectural sites and places. It aims to gather a number of case studies in order to collect historically concrete evidence of such spatial practices as reflected in literature and art as well as in sources pertaining to the social and political life of premodern, early modern, and modern era.

Prof. Dr. Markus Stock is an Associate Professor of German and Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. Nicola Vöhringer studied at the University of Tübingen, Strasbourg and Nebraska.