Exploring Bodies and Corporeality in Travel Writing, Koblenz
The international and interdisciplinary research network Traveling Bodies: Bodies and Corporeality in Travel Literature (funded by the German Research Council; project number 505343076; see also https://uni-ko.de/SkeTy) was established in 2022. Its goal is to integrate the body, our medium for exploring the world and the self while traveling, more systematically into the research on travel literature. Regardless of whether bodies, corporeality, or bodily experiences are prominently featured in travel texts or seem to 'disappear': travelers are always traveling bodies, and corporeality is never really absent from travel literature. Travel texts use different representational strategies to convey (more or less) prefigured bodily experiences and states of mind that refer to the corresponding perceptions of travelers. Both the physicality and corporeality of the travel writer and the travelees are observed, narrated and reflected on. Of course, the embodied experiences depicted in the texts should not be understood as 'authentic' experiences of the empirical travelers. Rather, the object of research is the textual staging of bodily and corporeal perceptions and experiences of media figures (the 'I' in the text; travel writer). These perceptions and experiences are also reconfigured in relation to traditional genre conventions and traditions of representation (including their disruption), intertextual references, linguistic forms of aestheticization, etc.
The planned conference (November 25-26, 2025) on Exploring Bodies and Corporeality in Travel Writing will take place as part of the founding of the research unit Körper • Reise • Literatur / Body • Travel • Literature at the University of Koblenz. We invite papers that address the topic of the body and corporeality in travel writing. The focus should be on texts that are based on actual journeys and therefore feature an inscribed habitus of experience and 'authenticity'.
Possible topics may include but are not limited to the following aspects:
• (im)mobile bodies (transportation, borders, space, stasis, restrictions)
• time, (im)mobility, technology, virtuality, and the traveling body
• encounters (of the new, the un/familiar, the so-called ‚Other‘, the self)
• incorporation (food, senses, culture, the ‘Other’)
• travel writing and all the senses
• fragile bodies, tough bodies (vulnerability, risk, resilience, forced travel, extreme travel, disease, health)
• (trans)gender, race, class, dis/ability, age, etc. and travel writing
• ecocritical perspectives – travel (writing) and the more-than-human world
Contributions from different disciplines are welcome, the conference language will be English. Please send your abstract (about 300 words) for a 20-minute presentation together with short biographical information to: schaffers@uni-koblenz.de and nmschroeder@uni-koblenz.de. The deadline for the submission of abstracts is June 27, 2025. We look forward to receiving your proposals!
Literature:
Traveling Bodies: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Traveling as an Embodied Practice. Eds. Nicole Maruo-Schröder, Sarah Schäfer-Althaus, and Uta Schaffers. Routledge, 2024 (Series: Routledge Research in Travel Writing).
For future updates, please visit: https://uni-ko.de/Bj11B
Contact Information
Prof. Dr. Uta Schaffers and Prof. Dr. Nicole Maruo-Schröder
Contact Email
schaffers@uni-koblenz.de
URL
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