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.