Standing Session

Genres and Audiences / Historical and Political Studies

Cecile Ruel (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
ceci@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

The Travel and Literature session welcomes proposals focused on travel, odyssey, and mobility through a literary lens, with a special interest in 20th- 21st century travel writing.

We are particularly interested in papers that take into consideration travel writing by authors better known for other forms of writing (novelists, poets, philosophers, essayists) and for whom travel, and travel writing, serve as a means to veer from their habitual modes of writing and allow them to experiment with another form (Baudrillard’s Cool Memories, Barthes’ Empire of Signs, Leiris’ Phantom Africa are examples of travel narratives of interest).

Topics may include:

• Theories of travel and travel writing

• The poetics of travel

• Travel writing and the self/other

• Travel writing and ecocriticism

• Travel journalism, guidebooks and digital media

• Travel writing and anthropology

The Travel and Literature session welcomes proposals focused on travel, odyssey, and mobility through a literary lens, with a special interest in 20th- 21st century travel writing.

We are particularly interested in papers that take into consideration travel writing by authors better known for other forms of writing (novelists, poets, philosophers, essayists) and for whom travel, and travel writing, serve as a means to veer from their habitual modes of writing and allow them to experiment with another form (Baudrillard’s Cool Memories, Barthes’ Empire of Signs, Leiris’ Phantom Africa are examples of travel narratives of interest).

Topics may include:

• Theories of travel and travel writing

• The poetics of travel

• Travel writing and the self/other

• Travel writing and ecocriticism

• Travel journalism, guidebooks and digital media

• Travel writing and anthropology