Reading, Writing and Travelling

Submissions are invited for a collection of essays on the theme of Reading,
Writing and Travelling, 1600-1830. Essays might explore a variety of
intersections between reading, writing, and travelling in texts with any
geographic focus within this historical timeframe, addressing such issues as:

* how travel is informed, and mediated, by other texts, or how writers
negotiate with prior representations of places and peoples;
* the use of different literary forms (narrative, letters, journal,
memoranda) to channel travel experience, and how this impacts on the nature of
the representation;
* the evolution of travel writing from e.g. field notes or rough diary
entries to published narrative;
* historical changes in modes of organising and making sense of travel
experience;
* the influence of gender on representations in writing of travel and the
travelling self;
* the historical reception of travel accounts, or ways of theorising such
reception;
* the purported educational benefits of travel, or of the reading or writing
of travel accounts.
Other interpretations are possible, of course. Essays should be up to 7000 words
in length. Please send an abstract of c.500 words as a Microsoft Word
attachment (.doc or .docx) to Robin Jarvis (Robin.Jarvis@uwe.ac.uk) and Melanie Ord (Melanie.Ord@uwe.ac.uk) by 31 October or as soon as possible thereafter. The deadline for completed essays will be summer 2011.