© Rune Graulund
Writing Travel in the Twenty-First Century: Mobility and Authenticity in the Planetary Emergency (MAP)
Travel has always been part of human life, and the stories we tell about it help shape how we see the world. But the way we write about travel is changing. The project will explore how people today describe their journeys, and how digital tools and platforms are creating new ways of telling travel stories.
Travel is no longer what it used to be. Slow travel, flight shame, sustainable travel, eco- and anti-tourism, staycation and microadventures are but some of many recent terms testifying to a growing awareness that mobility has become inextricably intertwined with planetary concerns, regardless of whether it is the short distance of a commute to work, or that of long-distance globetrotting.
In a world in which some tech billionaires build their own private rockets in order to go to Mars (SpaceX), while others spend their amassed fortunes trying to build an alternate reality (Meta) that will supposedly render physical mobility obsolete, travel shifts in form, meaning and destination as never before.
Furthermore, while COVID-19 momentarily put a halt to the unfettered mobility of the privileged, promising a new and more considerate future regime of travel less damaging to both planet and people, it is now clear that this was only a temporary respite. Querying why, how, and indeed if ‘we’ need to travel, and of the environmental impact of mobility based on leisure, MAP will investigate transitions in the way in which travel is written, documented, and imagined.
Technology is changing our sense of place
MAP looks at how novel and different types of physical forms of travel—from slow, local trips to fast, global ones, from extraterrestial and interplanetary travel—may be changing or even replacing traditional forms of travel writing. The project also examines how digital media has changed the way in which travel is documented as of how it is produced and disseminated.
Using critical perspectives from postcolonial studies, environmental thinking, and digital humanities, the research project will offer new insights into how travel writing works today. MAP thus explores how travel stories reflect bigger issues like who gets to travel, how travel affects the planet, and how technology is changing our sense of place, but also our sense of self.
The goal is to better understand how we imagine movement, distance, and connection in a world that is connected as never before, but also a planet that is in crisis.
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Events
SEMINAR: Scorched Earth: Writing Travel in the Twenty-first Century
Talks by Caroline Blinder and Richard Crownshaw (Goldsmiths, University of London) and Aidan Tynan (Cardiff University).
