Sensing Travel in the Hispanic World
Description
Travel writing is a crucial site for the construction of cultural difference and the negotiation of power. This seminar seeks to move beyond traditional critical receptions by foregrounding the importance of sensory perception and sensual experience in Hispanophone travel accounts, particularly as they intersect with the asymmetrical power dynamics of the North-South divide. While scholars of the Anglophone world have explored how sensuality (Bohl; Kostova; Pritchard & Morgan) and the visual (Alú & Hill; Colbert; Topping) shape travel writing, this area remains under-examined in the Hispanic tradition. We invite proposals that explore how travel writers in the Hispanophone world have used their senses to inscribe, interpret, and challenge their surroundings, to reveal the uneven relationships between centers and peripheries.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Sensing cultural assumptions: how do travel accounts privilege sight over other senses, and what does this reveal about the traveler’s cultural assumptions? Building on Forsdick’s work on sensory and motor impairments in travel writing, we welcome papers that explore how sound, smell, taste, and touch are used textually to navigate experiences of displacement, unfamiliarity, or hostility.
- The Sensual as Embodied Knowledge: Beyond mere sense perception, how do authors use the sensual—the experience of the body, physical pleasure, and desire—to represent a new place? How does gender influence the ways in which they narrate their “journey of desire” (Fullagar)? We welcome papers that foster an intersectional approach and take into account how gender, class, and race shape power relationships between local populations and travelers.
- Ugly Feelings: Drawing on the work of Ngai, we are interested in travel accounts that foreground "ugly feelings"—boredom, envy, or disappointment––and give voice to other voices (Fernández). Are travelers from the South journeying to the metropole "entitled" to these “unproductive” emotions? How do such feelings not only challenge center-periphery models but also widely-accepted narratives of wonder and awe?
- Gender and Sensory Experience: Travel accounts have been dominated by the perspectives of white, Western men, which shaped colonial hierarchies and justified sexual exploitation (Pratt, Massey). We invite proposals exploring how women and other gender-nonconforming travelers use the senses and the sensual to inscribe their journeys, challenging these dominant narratives.
- Senses and Science: Scientific travelogues have historically used sight as the primary sense to classify new species (Wasciewzki). We seek proposals that explore how travelers use all their senses to convey newness and discovery, and how they challenge the primacy of the visual?
- Dissonance and Disenchantment: We are interested in papers that examine how travelers' emphasis on dissonance and negative emotions shape their experience of modernity.
Schedule
Papers
Speaker Bio
I am a specialist in literature of migration from the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and Africa. My work focuses on the concept of “the new errantry,” examining how authors from Cuba, Dominican Republic and Equatorial Guinea challenge traditional colonial migration axes and imagine new, non-biological family formations, construct transnational and diasporic identities, and express solidarity with contemporary migrants.
Speaker Bio
Ty West is an Associate Professor of Spanish and Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures at Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame. He holds a Ph.D. in Spanish from Vanderbilt University and specializes in interdisciplinary approaches to nineteenth-century culture, history, and literature in Latin America, with emphasis on Mexico. His current research explores the relationship between travel, intellectual and cultural history, and print culture in nineteenth-century Mexico.
Speaker Bio
I am currently an Assistant Professor of Spanish at Arizona State University, where I teach courses on Mexican and Latin American cultural production. My research focuses on Latin American literature and interdisciplinary approaches to Sound studies, with a particular focus on 19th and early 20th century Mexico. I have published peer-reviewed journal articles in recognized scholarly journals, such as Hispanic Review and Revista de Estudios Hispánicos.
Speaker Bio
Carlos Abreu Mendoza is Associate Professor of Latin American Literature and Culture at Texas State University. His current research focuses on the thematization of sound in nation-building narratives and the relationship between aesthetics and politics. He is currently working on his monograph, Audible Sublime: Literature and Aurality in Nineteenth-Century Latin America, under contract with University of Pittsburgh Press.
Papers
Speaker Bio
Alejandro Quintero Mächler holds a B.A. in History (Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá), a B.A. in Philosophy (Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá), an M.A. in Philosophy (New School for Social Research), and a PhD in Latin American and Iberian Cultures (Columbia University). His interests revolve around 19th Century Latin American Culture and Intellectual History. In 2023, he published his first book: Perder la cabeza en el siglo XIX. Ensayos sobre historia de Colombia e Hispanoamérica.
Speaker Bio
Mauricio Oportus Preller is a visiting assistant professor in Spanish and Portuguese at Northwestern University. Mauricio's research explores intersections between literary practices and legal discourses at the turn of the century in Latin America. His articles on law and literature have appeared in Hispanic Review and Dibur: Literary Journal, and his reflections on digital media and the public humanities are forthcoming in the The Palgrave Handbook of Humanities Podcasting.
Speaker Bio
Cristina Carnemolla is an Assistant Professor of Hispanic and Italian Studies at McGill University. She obtained her Ph.D. in Romance Studies from Duke University. Her research focuses on realist and naturalist novels with a comparative interest between the Italian, Spanish, Peruvian and Argentine traditions. She has published on the reception of naturalism in Italy and Spain, on women writers in the long 19th-century, marxism, and ecocriticism.
Papers
Speaker Bio
Blake Seana Locklin is an associate professor of Spanish in the World Languages and Literatures department at Texas State University. She has published articles on connections between Spanish America and Asia, including literary representations of Asia by Spanish Americans and works by Spanish Americans of Asian descent. Her current research focuses on transpacific studies and El Periquillo Sarniento.
Speaker Bio
Rafael Núñez-Rodríguez, Ph.D. in Romance Studies from UNC-Chapel Hill, explores intersections of literature, economy, and ecology. His book project, Archaeology of Debt: Spanish-Cuban Printed Culture at the End of the 19th Century, examines financial movements, their ecological impact, and literary representation. He also studies contemporary literature, especially works after the 2008 financial crisis, analyzing how artistic expression responds to economic upheaval.
Speaker Bio
McKew Devitt is a Senior Lecturer in Spanish Language and Literature at the University of Vermont. His research focuses on contemporary Spanish culture, and he has published and presented work on numerous writers and filmmakers. He is currently working on a book project that deals with representations of rural Spain, the demographic challenge known as the España vaciada, and how these subjects are addressed through narrative and film.