What transpires when one writes about their travels? What does it mean when an encounter with an(other) is textualised?
In today’s globalised world, travel has become a commonplace commodity, and our encounters with other cultures may no longer feel as novel, given our visual exposure to the world’s wealth of linguacultures through social media. This is a distinct innovation in the current millennium.
For most of human history, however, travel entailed a profound redefinition of the Self through confrontation with the Other. Many travellers sought to process this radical experience through writing. In this way, travel shifts from journey as transborder movement to text as in translational narration. The workshop explores the tensions embedded in such texts.
Ranging from the 16th to the 21st centuries and spanning across Europe and Asia, the talks engage central concerns of travel writing studies, including the blurring of fiction and nonfiction in travel literature, the social and material implications of representing the “Other”, and the role of travel in shaping identity.
PROGRAMME
14:00 – 14:05
Opening words
14:05 – 15:00
Keynote (in English)
The Hypothetical Genre between Fiction and Nonfiction Travel Writing
Kai Mikkonen
Professor of Comparative Literature
Department of Philosophy
15:00 – 15:30
Presentation 1 (in English)
British travellers to the Romanian Principalities in the 17th and 18th centuries
Emilia Ivancu
University Lecturer of Romanian Language, Literature, and Culture
Department of Languages
15:30 – 16:00
Presentation 2 (in English)
Italian travel writing in colonial Philippines
Jillian Melchor
Doctoral Researcher in Spanish Philology
Department of Languages
16:00 – 16:20
Coffee break
16:20 – 16:50
Presentation 3 (in Italian)
Il viaggio in Svezia di Giuseppe Francesco Baruffi (1852)
Enrico Garavelli
University Lecturer of Italian Philology
Department of Languages
16:50 – 17:20
Presentation 4 (in French)
Regards croisés sur Tôkyô dans quelques exemples de la littérature de langue française contemporaine
Sabine Kraenker
Senior University Lecturer of French Language and Culture
Department of Languages
17:20 – 17:50
Presentation 5 (in English/Russian)
Early Finnish Swedish travel diary to Russia
Tomi Huttunen
Professor of Russian Literature and Culture
Department of Languages