cfp.english.upenn.edu

Travel and Truth: An International Research Conference
Wolfson College, Oxford - 16-18 September 2011

‘Travellers, poets and liars are three words all of one significance”
– Richard Braithwhaite, 1631

“We love the Old Travelers. We love to hear them ... blaspheme the sacred name of Truth“
- Mark Twain, 1869

Whether in the name of exploration, pilgrimage, science, inspiration, or a mixture of all these, the issue of ‘truth’ has been one of the most constant, complex, and contentious in the cultural history of travel – if not its most definitive concern. This conference will explore the manifold ways in which travel and truth interact: the ways travel has revealed or produced, depended on or defied what is held to be ‘true’; the kinds of truth that emerge through accounts of journeys, real or imagined; and how travel has, in different cultural and historical circumstances, affected notions of ‘truth’ itself.

Proposals for 30-minute papers are invited from researchers and writers on any aspect of this travel and truth relationship, without restriction on disciplinary approach or period. Papers may be general or specific, and might include (though are not limited to) the following

- Travel and the history of scientific truth
- Travel and the evolution of philosophic truth
- Otherness, outsiders and truth
- Travel and postmodern relativism
- Travel as an ‘ironic’ mode of perception
- Documentary veracity as generic prerequisite of travel writing
- Traveller’s rhetoric of authenticity
- The ‘gendered’ truth of travel
- Anthropological truth and ‘Writing Culture’
- The ‘true traveller’ and the ‘mere’ tourist

CONFIRMED PLENARY SPEAKERS
Prof. JAMES BUZARD (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Prof. OTTMAR ETTE (University of Potsdam)
MICHAEL WOOD (BBC Broadcaster / Historian)
Prof. TIM YOUNGS (Nottingham Trent University)
CALL FOR PAPERS DEADLINE: 15 MARCH 2011

Please email proposals for 20 minute papers, and 300 word biogs to mail@travelcultures.com