Abstract: Robert T. Tally Jr., Professor of English at Texas State University, is one of the leading figures in Spatial Literary Studies. He is the chief editor of Palgrave Macmillan’s Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies book series. He has published extensively in Literary Cartography, Marxist criticism and World Literature. Dr. Yuan Yuan, while working as a visiting scholar at UC, Berkeley (2018—2019), interviewed Professor Tally at the 2019 Modern Language Association of America Convention in Chicago and sought his opinions on some of the major issues in Spatial Literary Studies: 1) theoretical genealogy; 2) possibility of dialogue between Chinese and Western scholars in this academic field; 3) pedagogy; and 4) tendencies in future development. Tally emphasizes the inborn interdisciplinarity of Spatial Literary Studies. He believes that place-mindedness prevails on three different levels: writing, reading, and criticism. He points out the problem with Bertrand Westphal’s geocentric approach and argues against the negative influence of digital humanities represented by Stanford Literary Lab. However, he sees possible interfaces among Spatial Literary Studies and AI studies, Narratology, Ecocriticism, and so on. Literature teachers can arrange field trips and adopt other approaches to Affective Geography in their courses. The interview thus inspires a reemphasis of the Marxist approach which is interdisciplinary, comprehensive, dialectical, and full of humanity in its essence.

Key words: Spatial Literary Studies, Digital Humanities, pedagogy, Robert T. Tally Jr., Marxism