Airportness: The Nature of Flight

by Christopher Schaberg

Overview

Airportness takes the reader on a single day's journey through all the routines and stages of an ordinary flight. From curbside to baggage, and pondering the minutes and hours of sitting in between, Christopher Schaberg contemplates the mundane world of commercial aviation to discover “the nature of flight.” For Schaberg this means hearing planes in the sky, recognizing airline symbols in unlikely places, and navigating the various zones of transit from sliding doors, to jet bridge, to lavatory. It is an ongoing, swarming ecosystem that unfolds each day as we fly, get stranded, and arrive at our destinations. Airportness turns out to be more than just architecture and design elements-rather, it is all the rumble and buzz of flight, the tedium of travel as well as the feelings of uplift.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501325717
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	09/21/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
File size:	824 KB

About the Author

Christopher Schaberg is Associate Professor of English and Environmental Studies at Loyola University New Orleans, USA, where he teaches courses on contemporary literature and nonfiction, cultural studies, and environmental theory. He is the author of The Textual Life of Airports: Reading the Culture of Flight (2013) and The End of Airports (2015) and co-editor of Deconstructing Brad Pitt (2014). He is series co-editor (with Ian Bogost) of Bloomsbury's Object Lessons.
Christopher Schaberg is Director of the Program in Public Scholarship at Washington University in St. Louis, USA, and the author of The Textual Life of Airports (2012), The End of Airports (2015), Airportness (2017), The Work of Literature in an Age of Post-Truth (2018), Searching for the Anthropocene (2019), Pedagogy of the Depressed (2021), and Adventure: An Argument for Limits (2023), all published by Bloomsbury. He is also the founding co-editor (with Ian Bogost) of Bloomsbury's Object Lessons book series.

Table of Contents

1. Preflight
2. Ride to the Airport
3. Curbside
4. Boarding Pass
5. Security
6. Walk to the Gate
7. People Watching
8. Attack
9. Waiting
10. Workers
11. Art
12. Gate Change
13. Gate Lice
14. Fishing Shirts
15. Runway
16. Holding
17. Takeoff
18. Window Seat
19. Sunrise
20. Armrests
21. New Planes
22. Airplane Reading I
23. Consider the Lavatory
24. Snacking
25. Initial Descent
26. Connection
27. Play
28. Sparrows
29. Twitter
30. Breakfast
31. 747
32. Colin Farrell
33. In-flight Entertainment I: Somewhere
34. In-flight Entertainment II: The Force Awakens
35. Airplane Reading II
36. Plane Sighting
37. Higher Still
38. Entanglements
39. In-flight Entertainment III: United 93
40. Old Planes
41. Gender
42. Water Landing
43. Arrival
44. Destination
45. Baggage
46. Exit
47. Home

Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

A breezy read that describes a single-day’s jourbaney through the seemingly routine but interconnected activities that characterize air flight today … One hope Schaberg has for readers of his book is that they will learn to be more contemplative and flexible as they roll their luggage through the Disney World-style lines on their way to meet the TSA agent with the blue latex gloves … Yes, airline travel is filled with mysteries and conundrums, but Schaberg offers a few tips. The maxim that tickets are cheaper if you fly on Tuesdays or Wednesdays is usually true “but not always the case.” Pack smaller and carry on your bag to lower your blood pressure. Appreciate the craziness and the bravery of the Wright Brothers and other aviation pioneers, including Moisant, who gave their lives to create this amazing advance in human history.” – Clarion Herald

“A fascinating study exploring the peculiar state of consciousness created by modern air travel.” - ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature & Environment

From the Publisher