8th Annual McGill University Graduate Student Symposium on Language and Literature "Representing the Border"
N.B.: Pour étudiants de 3è cycle (Graduate Students)
- Papers are being solicited for a panel on travel writing, "The Journey and the Genre"
Travel writing crosses the borders of geography and of genres. This panel is interested in topics concerning the human 'geographic' elements of travel writing, what C. Thubron calls 'one civilisation reporting on the other', and the transgressions of genres in travel writing as a literary form. M. Kowalewski writes that some travel writing has more to do with 'status anxieties and utopian longings than a genuine interest in other cultures.' How do these longings and anxieties conflict with 'genuine' cultural experiences abroad? J. Raban notes that travel writing is an eclectic mix of genres, accomodating 'the private diary, the essay, the short story, the prose poem...It free mixes narrative and discursive writing...Much of its 'factual material, in the way of bills, menus, ticket-stubs, names and addresses, dates and destinations, is there to authenticate their experiences abroad, and what tensions are created by using these materials in the travel writing experience? This panel is interested in a range of topics, icnluding:
- The writer living abroad and how 'living among strangers' affexts his/her writing
- The dissolution of boundaries and cultural norms that occurs while traveling, such as the 'liberating' aspect of Paris in the 1920s for women, who may have been constrained by cultural norms at home.
- Commodification of the travel genre.
- 'Authenticity' in cross-cultural representation.
- Tensions between the factual and fictional of travel writing -reportage or literary form?
- Authorial identity in travel writing and what role the 'other' has in forming that identity.
- How are cross-cultural experiences liberating?
Interdisciplinary papers (such as Art History) addressing the role of the artist living abroad and representing a foreign culture will also be considered.
250-500 word proposals