Call for papers

Travel in the Nineteenth Century: Narratives, Histories and Collections
Lincoln, UK, 14-15 July 2011

In the nineteenth century, railways made distant locations ever more
accessible, the Grand Tour became more and more a pastime of the middle
classes and British imperial expansion brought exotic locales and
non-Western cultures ever closer to home. New ways of thinking about
and communicating experiences of travel and of interactions with other
cultures held a significant influence in various areas of
nineteenth-century culture. This period saw an enormous expansion in
museums and popular exhibition culture, technological innovations such
as photography and film, as well as the vast growth of a popular press
that served to deliver these experiences, images and objects to an
increasingly literate public. This public in turn seemed to possess an
insatiable appetite for travel narratives, shows and exhibitions, both
fictional and factual.

This interdisciplinary conference seeks to explore the divergent and
complex ways in which travel was understood and communicated in the
nineteenth century. Contributors are invited to investigate the
depiction and representation of travel in as wide a variety of media and
for as wide a variety of audiences as possible. We seek submissions from
historians, literary scholars, art historians, anthropologists and
material culture scholars, which illuminate the narratives-popular,
academic, private or official-that surrounded travel in the period.
Keynote speakers confirmed so far: Professor James Buzard (MIT),
Professor Nicholas Thomas (Cambridge), Dr Geoff Quilley (Sussex)

We invite papers on themes such as:
The construction of ideas of the real and the virtual, authenticity and
distance, through travel narratives;
Different venues for narrating travel, and the way such venues affected
the consumption of travel narratives;
Different modes of travel such as the missionary, the explorer, the
tourist, the connoisseur and the scientist, and how they were
constructed by texts, images and objects;
Different audiences for travel narratives - in literature, exhibitions
or private patronage of artists, and in museums and private collections;
How different narratives framed and constructed the moment of encounter
with the cultural other in travel;
The role of technology in enabling new narratives of travel; and how
narratives of travel described technology;
Travelling in time as well as travelling in space.

We also invite session proposals which map onto the themes listed above.
Session proposals should include a brief outline of the session (300
words) as well as three abstracts (300 words each) for the proposed
session.

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to Kate Hill
(khilllincoln.ac.uk), Laurie Garrison (lgarrisonlincoln.ac.uk) or
Claudia Capancioni (claudia.capancionibishopg.ac.uk)
Closing date for proposals: 15 February 2011