EPISTOLARITY AND/IN TRAVEL WRITING

Fictional and non-fictional epistolary travel narratives have long provided valuable insights into travel as an experience and contributed to our understanding of the “person” taking the trip. Epistolary travel writing goes as far back as the pilgrimage of the Spanish nun Egeria, undertaken in the late 4^th century CE. This issue’s special focus is on a variety of texts, in different languages, narrating travel through letters.

Topics of discussion may include, but are not restricted to:

• the letter as an organizing principle of the travel text;
• epistolary travel narratives and identity construction;
• travel letters and their addressees;
• epistolary travel writing and its readership;
• gender politics and epistolary travel writing;
• epistolary travel writing and the exploration of cultural/religious difference;
• cultural/literary histories of epistolary travel writing.

FORUM ON HISTORY

REVISITING THE PAST: BYZANTIUM AND ITS OTHERS

Volume 3, Issue 1 (2019)

CULTURES AND/OF MIGRATION

The history of migration begins with the origins of the human species. Over many centuries, the movements of people(s) have affected economies, cultures and political structures in a wide variety of significant ways.

Topics may include, but are not restricted to:

• cultural patterns of migration;
• forced vs voluntary migration;
• migration and cultural identity;
• migration and gender;
• cultures of departure and cultures of arrival;
• migration and diaspora;
• migration and memory;
• migration and language;
• writing migration;
• images of migrants in literature, film and the mass media;
• education and management of the cultural impact of migration.

Volume 2, Issue 1 (2018)

REPRESENTATIONS OF TRAVEL AND MOBILITY FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE PRESENT

While travel and mobility have long been perceived as quintessentially human activities and have been particularly associated with voluntary, literate travellers recording their own experiences, the terms can also be applied to animals and involuntary migrants. Irrespective of whether they are voluntary or involuntary, travel and mobility can be placed under different headings and linked to a variety of other concepts, such as displacement, migration, exile, border crossing, dispersal, cultural/economic transfer and communication. Moreover, they have different meanings and call up diverse associations in different historical and cultural contexts.   

Topics of discussion may include, but are not restricted to:

• new directions in research on travel and mobility;
• writing travel and mobility;
• teaching travel and mobility;
• virtual travel;
• travel and communication/mediation;
• agents of communication/mediation;
• utopian/dystopian travel;
• travel, mobility and the politics of place;
• mobility and nomadism;
• cosmopolitanism, travel and mobility.