An
international conference hosted by
The
UNIVERSITY of EDINBURGH
and NATIONAL LIBRARY of SCOTLAND
7-10
April 2010
The University of Edinburgh (Institute of Geography
and Centre for the History of the Book), in collaboration
with the National Library of Scotland, is pleased
to announce "Correspondence: travel, writing,
and literatures of exploration, c. 1750–c.1850"--a
four-day, interdisciplinary conference concerned
with travel, travel writing, and the associated
literatures of exploration.
In bringing together scholarly perspectives from
geography, book history, literary studies, and
the history of science, the conference seeks to
interrogate the relationship between travel, exploration,
and publishing in order better to understand how
knowledge acquired 'in the field' became, through
a series of material and epistemic translations,
knowledge on the page. Plenary speakers include
Elizabeth Bohls (University of Oregon), Joyce
Chaplin (Harvard University), Tim Fulford (Nottingham
Trent University), and Nigel Leask (University
of Glasgow). Proposals for papers on all aspects
of travel in the period in question are welcome.
Preference may be given to papers which engage
with one or more of the following themes:
- Travellers' inscriptive practices
How, where, when, and why did travellers and explorers
choose to record the details of their journeys?
In what respects did the mode and style of travellers'
written accounts--whether rough notes, regularised
diaries and logs, thematic reports, or letters--discipline
their content and reflect their intended purpose?
- Travellers' credibility and the veracity of
written accounts
Given that travellers and explorers were only
ever partial and imperfect witnesses, how did
they assure themselves--and, through the published
versions of their work, their audiences--of the
truth? How did their accounts correspond to the
things they sought to describe and understand?
What were the epistemological bases to travellers'
claims to truth?
- The correspondence between manuscript and print
What were the material and epistemic transformations
which turned travellers' initial notes into completed,
published narratives? Which changes and adaptations
were considered necessary in making the transition
from manuscript to print? How, in a pre-photographic
age, were credible illustrations produced in the
field, and how did they supplement and lend authority
to printed texts?
Further particulars are available from the conference
web site.
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