Travel is more than a physical movement across space; it is also a complex cultural and socio-political practice that allows people to cross cultural borders and meet challenges in different cultural and political environments. In the contemporary era, travel has increased dramatically, becoming more frequent and more deeply embedded in global systems of power that impact who can travel, under what conditions, and how such movement is represented and circulated. Studying the politics of travel reveals not only how people and capitals of knowledge move, but also how these movements expose the structural inequalities, cultural negotiations, and geopolitical tensions that all contribute to defining the current geo-social order.

Our seminar warmly welcomes proposals on the politics of travel in the contemporary age and seeks to include a wide range of travel-related narratives—literature, film, graphic novels, ethnography, and online media. The current neoliberal market contributes to the growing global travel as it boosts the globalized economy and encourages cross-border communication. However, this apparent freedom hides the problem of inequality brought on by the asymmetry of power among countries.

By examining travel through the lenses of the interaction between mobility, neoliberal capitalism, and the production of transcultural knowledge, we attempt to address the following questions: In what ways does mobility reveal or reproduce the structural inequalities embedded in neoliberal capitalism? How do these narratives participate in the production of transcultural knowledge, and what forms of knowledge do they generate to legitimize the current global order? To what extent can contemporary travel narratives serve as tools to critique the current global order? Through these questions and the engagement with diverse travel-related narratives, our seminar aims to foster interdisciplinary conversations on how contemporary travel narratives both participate in and critique the global power dynamics.