Writing"
Date sent: Wed, 5 Jun 2002 15:20:07 +0200

CONFERENCE

The Science (and Art) of Travel Writing 1750-1850

14.-15. June 2002
Location: IFK Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften

This conference will discuss scientific travel writing 1750-1850 as a
"verschollene Wissenschaft" - a genre that that no longer exists in the
same form today but once had high claims to scientific status as a form
of ethnographic observation. It will focus on the relationship between
science and art in this genre, discussing both its historical
significance and its relevance to cultural sciences today.

The scholarly context for this topic is a multi-disciplinary revival of
interest in scientific travel writing. Historians, anthropologists, and
literary scholars have turned to travel writing as a starting-point for
the study of cultural contacts. Long neglected because it fell between
disciplines, scientific travel writing has attracted fresh attention
precisely for its mercurial synthesis of now-disparate approaches to
culture.

CONCEPT: Harry Liebersohn (Univ. of Illinois at Urbana
Champaign/History)

PARTICIPANTS: Vanessa Agnew (Univ. of Michigan/German Studies), Hans
Erich Bödeker (Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte, Göttingen), James A.
Boon (Princeton Univ./Anthropology), Philippe Despoix (Univ. de
Montréal/Études européennes), Thomas Fröschl (Univ. of Vienna/History),
Christa Riedl-Dorn (Museum of Natural History, Vienna), Sigrid Wadauer
(Historian, Vienna), Gotthart Wunberg (IFK)

Program:

(Program and abstracts available: http://www.ifk.ac.at)

Friday, June 14

Harry Liebersohn

Introduction

Philippe Despoix
Scientific, Literary and Political Discourses in the
South-Seas Travel-Accounts (1765-1785)

Vanessa Agnew
The Earwitness in the Travelogue

Hans Erich Bödeker
Reiseinstruktionen und die Entstehung einer "Wissenschaft vom Menschen"
im ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert

Harry Liebersohn
The Travel Diary in the Network of Knowledge, 1750-1850

Saturday, June 15

Sigrid Wadauer
Craftwork: How hardship becomes adventure

James A. Boon
Intersensory Travel-writing as Scientific Dandyism: Select Episodes

Plenary Discussion

____________________

Dr. Eva Cescutti
IFK Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften
Reichsratsstraße 17
A-1010 Wien
Tel.: (+43-1) 504 11 26-28
Fax: (+43-1) 504 11 32
<mailto:cescuttiifk.ac.at> cescuttiifk.ac.at
<http://www.ifk.ac.at/> http://www.ifk.ac.at