CFP: Early American Transnational Travel Narratives, ASA, Nov. 15-18, 2012 (1/20/12)

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American Studies Association
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This panel proposal seeks papers that theorize and study the frontier and autobiographical travel narratives as places of transnational confluence.

During the antebellum period in America, when literacy rates increased, there was an explosion of autobiographical travel narratives. These narratives served multiple purposes, from pioneer advertisements to dire political warnings. They explored multiple identities created by the places from and to which they traveled, and they provided textual spaces to explore multiple transnational topics, in part because they described the constituencies of frontier cultures.

If interested in presenting, please submit a 250-word abstract to Tena L. Helton at thelt2@uis.edu by Jan. 20, 2012. Panel proposals must be submitted in their entirety by Jan. 26, 2012. If the panel is accepted, the presentations would occur Nov. 15-18, 2012, at the American Studies Association annual meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico.