Travel, Tourism, Trafficking through the Ages

Why go away to find ourselves? How does the self constitute itself “elsewhere”? This course considers the genre of travel writing and its theory: how are roots, routes, and rootlessness treated in diverse racial, spiritual, sexual, national, and imperial encounters. Today, when cosmopolitan tourists, intellectuals, or exotic and erotic adventurers share the same beach as downtrodden, abject refugees and their traffickers, what are the cultural, ethical and political implications of leisurely seeking out (self-) discovery, disappearing authenticity, and commodified otherness? Readings include Herodotus, Equiano, Chatwin, Kingsley, Montagu, Darwin, Twain, Miller, Durrell, Baldwin, Phillips, Iyer, Houellebecq, Woolf, Thompson, Theroux, Baudrillard