In keeping with the annual theme, “Duality, Doubles, and Doppelgangers,” this panel seeks to explore the relationship between duality, broadly conceived, travel, and writing about travel. We seek to interrogate the ways in which travel writing serves as a discursive engagement with multiple dualities, including self and other, authority and subordination, as well as style and content. Submissions from any time period will be considered and papers that explore a broad spectrum of genres, disciplines, and geographic regions will be given special consideration. Papers that address any approach to the conference theme are welcome. Potential topics and themes include (but are not limited to): 

• Duality, Doubles, and Doppelgangers in travel writing
• Sites as doppelgangers (i.e. the Grand Canal at The Venetian in Las Vegas or the Epcot World Showcase)
• Contact zones and the relationship between travelers and travelees
• The binaries of tourist/local; familiar/foreign
• Travel and the Uncanny
• Travel and the “Spatial Turn”
• Performativity and the travelling self
• Home and Away; Center and Periphery
• Post/Anti/Colonial Travel Writing
• Transnational and global forms of cultural exchange
• Identity and Travel
• Travel and constructions of race, class, and/or gender

Please send abstracts of approximately 200-300 words and a brief bio to Shannon Derby at MMLATravelWriting@gmail.comby April 15th.