Gluing two graphs Im wondering if there's an existing literature on this binary operation involving graphs wherein you identity $n$ vertices from one graph with $n$ vertices from the other such that the resulting structure is still a graph (no loops and multiple edges). For instance, given two paths $[a,b,c]$ and $[d,e,f]$, letting $a=f$ and $c=d$ produces $C_4$.
 A: Since I cannot add comments, I put this as an answer.
I do not know about specific graph-theoretical literature about the
operation you describe, but it seems that it can be exhibited as
a pushout in a suitable category.
For simplicity, I suppose you consider only undirected graphs.
Take the category where objects are sets equipped with a reflexive 
and symmetric relation, and where a morphism $h: (A,\alpha)\to(B,\beta)$
is an (ordinary) map of sets $h:A\to B$ that satisfies
$\forall a,a'\in A: (a,a')\in\alpha\Rightarrow (ha,ha')\in\beta$.
Then the objects of that category correspond to (undirected simple) graphs
and therefore also give a notion of graph homomorphism. Let $1$ be the
graph with exactly one vertex and write $n$ for the discrete graph with
$n$ vertices. Then, given two graphs $G$ and $H$, choosing $n$ vertices
in $G$ and $H$ is the same as giving monomorphisms $n\to G$ and $n\to H$,
and your gluing operation is then given as a pushout of
$G\leftarrow $n$ \rightarrow H$
A: Have a look at this:
http://www.win.tue.nl/~hholst/Research%20slides/minimum%20rank.pdf
I think that what van der Holst calls Separations is what you need.
A: In the book of Lov\'asz 
http://www.cs.elte.hu/~lovasz/bookxx/hombook-almost.final.pdf 
exposes a graph algebra in the sense that you mentioned.  
