MCLC: travel writing--cfp

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: karin baumgartner <karin.baumgartner at utah.edu>
Subject: travel writing--cfp
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(Un)Positioning Identity in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Travel
Writing
ACLA Seminar--cfp 

This seminar seeks to re-fashion current paradigms that define travel
narratives in terms of strictly mapped polarities. More than a strategic
instrument for measuring distance, we propose to use ³GPS² as a metaphor
to interrogate how travel influenced the construction of identity starting
in the late eighteenth century. The seminar employs Stuart Hall¹s
understanding of location as ³positions of enunciation² to investigate how
travel came to break down previously ³stable² notions of identity as
individuals experienced dislocation (viewed both as ³liberating² the
pre-modern self and as unsettling familiar categories). Early travel
narratives provide a unique opportunity to study how modern identity was
shaped through travel. We are inviting projects that explore how ³writing
on the move² incorporated and subverted cultural practices and identity
formation in relationship to narratives of place and space. How did travel
writing (re)fashion the coordinate system of identity when very few people
traveled outside their immediate surrounding? How did concepts of abroad
and home intersect in the cultural imagination of eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century readers? How are metaphors of movement used to
construct ³authentic² definitions of self?

 
We are interested in papers addressing historical/literary/cultural trends
to (un)position identity through travel in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. 

 
Paper topics might include (but are not limited to)

 
·      Travel as (un)positioning the individual
·      How does travel writing construct the modern self?
·      How does (real and imaginary) travel free the individual to
construct new social conventions?
·      Genres (such as travel handbooks) that construct new coordinate
systems

 
Seminar Proposal Keywords: eighteenth and nineteenth century travel,
travel narratives, identity, tourism, migration, dislocation, colonialism,
textuality

 
Seminar organizer: Karin Baumgartner (Associate Professor, German and
Comparative Literature, University of Utah) and Gema Guevara (Associate
Professor, Spanish and Comparative Literature, University of Utah)
 
ACLA seminars are organized in workshop formats where groups of
approximately six - twelve people convene each day. Participants should
plan to attend each seminar meeting.

You can submit a paper proposal directly to the ACLA website (paper
proposals may be submitted via the website
http://www.acla.org/acla2013/propose-a-paper-or-seminar/).

The deadline for paper submissions to the ACLA website is November 1.

Feel free to write to karin.baumgartner at utah.edu or gguevara at hum.utah.edu
with any particular questions.