Previous Calls for Papers and Panels

 

17th Annual American Literature Association Conference, 25-28 May 2006

 

Call For Papers

“Mobility, Migration, and Ethnic and Cultural Minorities in Writing on American Travel and Tourism.”

 

The Society for American Travel Writing.  American Literature Association Annual Conference, 25-28 May 2006, Hyatt Regency San Francisco, San Francisco, CA.

 

The Society for American Travel Writing, a member society of the American Literature Association, issues a call for papers for two sessions at the ALA 2006 conference in San Francisco, CA.  Entitled “Mobility, Migration, and Ethnic and Cultural Minorities in Writing on American Travel and Tourism,” the sessions will explore the concepts of mobility and migration expressed in writings by or representations of members of ethnic or cultural minorities in the U.S.  Approaches may include (but are not limited to):

 

·        Analyzing the difference between “majority” and “minority” perceptions of mobility, tourism, and/or migration.

·        Describing modes of travel in majority and minority communities or among minority communities.

·        Mapping a nexus of race, ethnicity, and travel, possibly through examining the construction of personae or national identity.

·        Discussing commercial or literary reception of travel texts by minority writers.

 

Panels

 

Session 4-J Mobility, Migration, and Ethnic and Cultural Minorities in Writing on American Travel and Tourism I

 

Organized by the Society for American Travel Writing

Thursday, 25 May 2006

 

Chair: Valerie Smith, Quinnipiac University

“Not the ‘Model Minority’: Mid-century Migration and Minors in Cynthia Kadohata’s The Floating World and Kira Kira,” Greta Aiyu

            Niu, University of Rochester

“Travel Writing, Authorship, and the Fugitive Aesthetic in William Wells Brown’s Three Years in Europe,” Charles Baraw, Wesleyan

            University

“Articulating the Racial Dimensions of Mobility in John A. Williams’ ‘This is My Country Too’ and Post-World War II Road Narratives,”

            Ann Brigham, Roosevelt University

 

Session 8-E Mobility, Migration, and Ethnic and Cultural Minorities in Writing on American Travel and Tourism II

 

Organized by the Society for American Travel Writing

Friday, 26 May 2006

 

Chair: Russ Pottle, Saint Joseph Seminary College

“Politics of Mobility in Song of Solomon and The Floating World,” Su-ching Huang, National Taiwan University

“Fund My Travel: Funding Proposals and Travel Writing,” Raymond Hsu, University of Wisconsin, Madison

“’Absolutely Alabaster Landscape’: The Heart of James Baldwin’s Europe,” William Merrill Decker, Oklahoma State University

 

Session 11-J Mobility, Migration, and Ethnic and Cultural Minorities in Writing on American Travel and Tourism III

 

Organized by the Society for American Travel Writing

Friday, 26 May 2006

 

Chair: Valerie Smith, Quinnipiac University

“Hiding in Plain Sight: African American Women, Travel and Ethnology in the Nineteenth Century,” Karin Thomas, Pennsylvania State

            University, Harrisburg

“Fellow Travelers, or, What’s Black and White and Red all Over: W.E.B. DuBois, the Cold War, and the Geographies of Race,” Art

            Redding, York University

“At Home on the Range: African American Travel, Migration, and the Allure of the Great Plains,” Kalenda Eaton, University of Nebraska,

                        Lincoln

 

16th Annual American Literature Association Conference, 26-29 May 2005

 

Call For Papers

 

“A Room of Its Own: Defining American Travel Writing?” 

 

As a subset of travel writing – a genre seemingly without boundaries – is there a way to identify a generically American travel writing?  In short, are there historical, economic, political, and/or stylistic features that make American travel writing unique, or at least identifiable, among the larger literature of travel writing?  Approaches may include (but are not limited to):

 

  • Generic definitions of “American” travel writing.
  • Comparative analyses of “American” travel writing and travel writing by authors from “other” cultures.
  • Examinations of a single author or single work.
  • Theoretical discussions of “American” literary consciousness and travel.

 

Panels

 

Session 9-C A Room of Its Own: Defining American Travel Writing

 

Organized by the Society for American Travel Writing

Friday, 27 May 2005

 

Chair: Russ Pottle, Saint Joseph Seminary College

 

“Inscriptions of the Maghreb in Nineteenth Century American Travel Writing,” Ahmed Idrissi Alami.

“Narrating Nationalism: Antebellum Anxieties of Identity in American Travel Literature for Children,” Chris Nesmith, University of South Carolina.

“Circuit of Ordeals: Ernest Hemingway and Graham Greene in Africa,” Emily Whittman, Villanova University.

 

Session 12-F Another Room of Its Own: Defining American Travel Writing II

 

Organized by the Society for American Travel Writing

Friday, 27 May 2005

 

Chair: Valerie Smith, Quinnipiac University

 

“Traveling in the Comfort Zone: Women Sightseers Abroad,” Susan Roberson, Texas A&M University Kingsville.

“The Letter Home,” William Decker, Oklahoma State University.

“American Narrative Mobility in the Daguerrean Era and Beyond,” Scott Palmer, Tufts University.

 

 

“The Voyage Out”: the 4th Biennial Conference of the International Society for Travel Writing, 21-24 October 2004

Panel
Session 3C Society for American Travel Writing: Special Affiliate Panel

 

Organized by the Society for American Travel Writing

Friday, 22 October 2004

 

Chair: Beth Lueck, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

 

 “Firebrand and the Cat: The Impossibility of Closure and William Byrd’s Histories of the Dividing Line,” Russ Pottle, Saint Joseph Seminary College.

 “Seeking out British Identity and Indian Aspirations in the British Raj,” Jeff Dupée, La Sierra University.

“The Discourse of Discomfort: Rebecca Solnit’s A Book of Migrations: Some Passages in Ireland,” Valerie Smith, Quinnipiac University.

 

 

15th Annual American Literature Association Conference, 27-30 May 2004

Call for Papers I

 

“Travel Writing and Pedagogy: Pratt’s ‘Effect of the Real.’”

 

The session will engage the difficulties of teaching travel writing to American students. Papers are welcome on specific American authors or on theoretical issues whose discussion includes American authors.

 

Topics that might be helpfully explored include (but are not necessarily limited to):

 

  • the tendency of even contemporary travel writing to confirm rather than

      challenge students’ expectations, stereotypes, and prejudices;

  • the problematics of student reactions to travel writing and the question of difference or diversity;
  • the selection of texts and authors for a multi-cultural classroom.

Panel

 

Session 11-G Travel Writing and Pedagogy: Pratt’s “Effect of the Real.”

 

Organized by the Society for American Travel Writing

Friday, 28 May 2004

 

Chair: Valerie Smith, Quinnipiac University

 

“Travel Theory and Narrative: A Sequential Course Model In and Out of the Classroom,” Jeffrey N. Dupée, La Sierra University.

“Influence, Identity, Invention: Blue Highways as Essential Travel Text,” Jon Volkmer, Ursinus College.

“(In)sightful(l) Travel Writing: “Effect of the Real” in Student Travel Writing,” Ginger Knowlton, University of Colorado, Boulder.

 

Call for Papers II

 

“Questioning Travel III: Travel Writing, Writing about Travel Writing, Questioning Ourselves.”

 

Helen Gilbert and Anna Johnston write that “Contemporary travel writing may well be attempting to find a new way to encounter the world, based on less exploitative and hierarchical relations than those enacted in earlier periods, but traces of imperial endeavor haunt the very vocabulary, grammar, form, and subjectivities available to the Western traveler, which, in turn, makes possible the continued power, influence, and effect of imperial modes of experiencing and narrating difference.”

 

This session will engage the relationship between the criticism of travel writing and the “imperial endeavor” described by Helen Gilbert and Anna Johnston.  Papers are welcome on specific American authors or on theoretical issues whose discussion includes American writers.  A general statement on the topic and avenues of inquiry that might helpfully be explored would read as follows:

 

If travel writing itself is limited in the ways described above, does writing about travel writing – analysis and criticism of travel writing and/or travel writers – find itself limited in similar fashion?  In short, does the growing body of writing about travel writing question the imperial endeavor, or does it willingly or unwillingly participate in supporting imperial modes of experiencing and narrating difference?

 

 

Panel

 

“Questioning Travel III: Travel Writing, Writing about Travel Writing, Questioning Ourselves.”

 

Organized by the Society for American Travel Writing

Friday, 28 May 2004

 

Chair: Russ Pottle, Saint Joseph Seminary College

 

“The Wall Street Tour: Stocks, Slave Girls, and Civilization,”" David A. Zimmerman, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

“A Fortunate Shame: The Politics of Nineteenth Century Tourism and Tourist Studies,” Stephanie LeMenager, University of California-Santa Barbara, Visiting Scholar, Harvard University.

“‘There's No Place Like Home’: The Imperialist Imperative in the Golden Age of Amateur Cinematography,” Devin A. Orgeron, North Carolina State University.

 

 

14th Annual American Literature Association Conference, 22-25 May 2003

Call for Papers I

 

Call for Papers:  Questioning Travel II: Travel and Tourism and American Writers.  The Society for American Travel Writing.  American Literature Association Annual Conference, 22-25 May 2003, Hyatt Regency Cambridge, Cambridge, MA.

 

The Society for American Travel Writing, a member society of the American Literature Association, issues a call for papers for its session at the ALA 2003 conference in Cambridge, MA.  Entitled "Questioning Travel II: Travel and Tourism and American Writers," the session will engage questions about the relationship between travel and tourism in American writing. Papers are welcome on specific American authors or on theoretical issues whose discussion includes American writers.

 

Papers should be 20 minutes in length.  Topics that might be helpfully explored include (but are not limited to) the relationship between travel and tourism and:

 

-- questions of authenticity;

 

-- structures of class, gender, or race;

 

-- expressions of identity and/or ideology;

 

-- genre conventions and/or rhetorical strategies.

 

Abstracts of more than two pages may be submitted by mail or, preferably, by email to Dr. Russ Pottle, Department of Literature, Saint Joseph Seminary College, Saint Benedict, LA, 70457, or <acdean@stjosephabbey.org> by 15 January 2003.

 

 

 

13th Annual American Literature Association Conference, 30 May-2 June, 2002.

 

Call for Papers

 

“Questioning Travel”

 

This session seeks to interrogate the conventions of American travel writing—that is travel writing produced by citizens of the United States about their journeys both at home and abroad.  Questions that might be helpfully explored include (but are not limited to):

 

•     What defines “American” travel writing?  Are there conventions that give it generic qualities?  Can there be said to be “essential works” of American travel writing.

•     How has American travel writing emerged as an important area of literary study? 

What facets of it in particular – perhaps neglected in the past – are attracting critical

attention now?

•     Has public reception of American travel writing changed over time?  Is contemporary

      American travel writing received differently from works published 10, 20, 50, 150

      years ago?

•    What can the study of the American travel narrative contribute to the larger field of

      literary studies?

 

Panels

 

Session XX-D “Questioning Travel II: Travel and Tourism and American Writers.”

 

Organized by the Society for American Travel Writing

Friday, 23 May 2003

 

Chair: Russ Pottle, Saint Joseph Seminary College

 

“‘Neither a history nor a book of travels …”: Writing the Nation into Existence One Journey at a Time (James Hall and Henry David Thoreau),” Yvonne Pelletier, University of Toronto.

“‘Strange Train,’ Strange Text: Orphan Trains and the Domestic American Frontier,” Linda Sumption, New Jersey City University.

“The Appalachian Trail – An American Fantasy,” Ulrike Brisson, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

 

Session XXIII-F “Questioning Travel II: Travel and Tourism and American Writers.”

 

Organized by the Society for American Travel Writing

Saturday, 24 May 2003

 

Chair: Russ Pottle, Saint Joseph Seminary College

 

“Obsolescence or Inversion: The Errant Eye of James’ Venetian Travel Writing,” Jennifer Scappettone, University of California, Berkeley.

“Tourists and Migrants on Steinbeck’s Heterotopian Highways,” Lars Larson, University of California, Los Angeles.

“Tourist Attraction: Summer Romance, and the Feminine Landscape in Edith Wharton’s Summer,” Tara Parmiter, New York University.

 

 

 

 

12th Annual American Literature Association Conference, 24-27 May 2001

 

Call for Papers

 

“New Lines of Sight: Outstanding Graduate Work in American Travel Writing”

 

Recognizing the excellent critical work being done in theses and dissertations on travel writing, the Society for American Travel Writing announces a call for papers from graduate students for an open panel.

 

Panel

 

Session III-G New Lines of Sight: Outstanding Graduate Work in American Travel Writing”

 

Organized by the Society for American Travel Writing

Thursday, 24 May 2001

 

Chair: Russ Pottle, Saint Joseph Seminary College

 

“‘Cultural Autobiography’ in the Travel Narratives of Paul Theroux,” Valerie M. Smith, University of Connecticut.

“Translating the U.S. Frontier for the East: Literary Versions of the American Frontier, 1824-1839,” Jeffrey Hotz, The George Washington University.

“Richard Henry Dana, Francis Parkman, and the Adventures of the Text,” Linda Sumption, City University of New York.