This seminar  (re)examines travel narratives of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as an affective archive of Sino-foreign encounters in the context of various concepts of modernity. Narratives of foreign journeys are important vehicles for debating the development and modernization of different societies; they are also saturated with a wide spectrum of affects and emotions ranging from fascination, pleasure, sympathy to anxiety, disdain and guilt. These affective registers are not merely personal, visceral responses but the very currency through which modernity, race, and gender are negotiated. This shapes how travelers perceive cultural differences and represent both themselves and others to their readers.

While travel narratives from metropolitan centers to Asia have generated substantial scholarship, the rich corpus of narratives circulating between the noncore regions of the world system and China remains comparatively overlooked. This seminar foregrounds underrepresented Anglo-American travel narratives, such as those by women, and draws attention to understudied African, Latin American, Asian, and Eastern European narratives about China, as well as Chinese travelogues about both the centre and peripheral regions. 

Focusing on travel narratives by foreigners in China and Chinese abroad in the pivotal period between the Treaty of Nanking (1842) and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (1949), we invite reflections on the contested pathways through which modern China was imagined and forged not through simple imitation, but through a complex process of translation, appropriation, and resistance.

We welcome contributions that address readings of foreign travelers in China and Chinese travelers abroad, with particular attention to:

• Travel narrative as a genre that registers affective encounters and mediates cultural hierarchies.

• Concepts of modernity employed by travel writers.

• The affective dimensions of alternative modernities: sympathy, disgust, admiration, nostalgia, hope, and others.

• Travelling bodies and visceral modernities in cross-cultural encounters.

• Cross-cultural friendship and solidarity as political and ethical practices.

• Ethnic comparisons and their affective dimensions.

• Gendered perspectives on travel and affect, particularly women’s accounts.

• The material and visual cultures of modern transcultural travels.

• Emotional geographies of treaty ports, steamships, and modern infrastructures.

Proposals that offer new conceptualizations of these issues are especially encouraged.

Please direct queries and submit paper abstracts (200–250 words) with a brief bio (100 words) by September 30, 2026, to Dr Juanjuan Wu ([email protected]) and Dr Tomasz Ewertowski ([email protected]).