CfP: Travel Writing, Knowledge-Making and Ignorance in the Early Modern Period (1600-1820)
Accounts of journeys and expeditions have long been seen as articulations of a hunger for knowledge about other places, climates and peoples. In the early modern period, the establishment of scientific associations and learned societies, the accelerated production of print artefacts and the drive for colonial expansion saw non-fictional travel writing became one of the most widely read genres in the Western world. Only relatively recently has attention turned to the ways in which travel writing problematises the creation, organisation and dissemination of knowledge. In line with studies into how factual information is acquired, processed and diffused (Winchester, 2023), but also the role played by ignorance, uncertainty and non-knowledge as productive driving forces (Burke, 2023; Gross and McGoey, 2023), this conference explores the challenges to forging knowledge in the period between 1600 and 1820.
Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:
- the tensions between knowledge practitioners gathering material “in the field” and those processing information back home;
- the handling of controversial and debated knowledge in travel writing and in translations of travel accounts;
- the relationship between travel writing, the formation of cognitive communities and (national) identity;
- the gendered implications of knowledge vs. ignorance;
- the relationship between readerships and “presumed knowledge” with regard to audiences for travel writing;
- materiality and visual culture in the representation of knowledge in travel accounts;
- the role played by translation and paratextual annotation in circulating, confirming or questioning types of knowledge generated through travel;
- the linguistic, cultural and intellectual challenges of discussing the “unknown”;
- the places and spaces in which information gathered by scientific travellers is shared and debated;
- how agents in the knowledge-making process (e.g. travellers, translators, illustrators, publishers, critics) present themselves as “knowledgeable” individuals with relevant expertise or as “knowledge-hungry” figures driven by curiosity;
- how types of knowledge gained through early modern travel have been curated in a museum setting.
Individual paper proposals should consist of an abstract (200 - 250 words) and a brief biography (80 - 100 words).
Deadline for proposals: 30th June 2025