CFP - Correspondence: Travel, Writing, and Literatures of Exploration, c. 1750-c.1850

7-10 April 2010

An international conference hosted by the University of Edinburgh and National Library of Scotland

CALL FOR PAPERS

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. 1750-1850'--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 Joyce Chaplin (Harvard University),
Nigel Leask (University of Glasgow), and Tim Fulford (Nottingham Trent University). 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=92
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?

Proposals of no more than 250 words should be sent to Dr Innes M. Keighren, Institute of Geography,
University of Edinburgh, Drummond Street, EDINBURGH, EH8 9XP or by email to
innes.keighren@ed.ac.uk no later than 1 October 2009. The organizers hope to have a programme of over
twenty papers over the four days of the meeting (including plenary papers).

Organizers: Dr Bill Bell, Dr Innes M. Keighren, Professor Charles W. J. Withers.