The Institute of Culture Studies of the University of Silesia and the International American Studies Association are proud to announce the 11th World Congress organised under the name Journeying (the) Americas The Paradoxes of Travel (and) Narratives, which will be held from 7 to 10 September 2023 at the Faculty of Humanities in Katowice (ul. Uniwersytecka 4).
The phenomenon of travel has been fraught with paradoxes since the times immemorial. Perhaps the most striking of the travel-related controversies is the fact that although it is one of humanity’s earliest experiences, journeying has never been available to all. Regarded as one of the elementary and universal social practices, it was—and still is—the share of the few. Equally paradoxically, despite the archetypal status of the very concept of the journey, in the social and geographical sense, travelling itself is a relatively new phenomenon: the onset of leisure travel comes as late as in the 19th century when modern means of mass transportation became popularly available and affordable. Unsurprisingly, then, many of those craving the knowledge of the distant lands, used to depend, and still largely rely on, mediated reports: texts, images, and other narratives representing fragments of experienced (or imagined) reality that always require voluntary suspension of disbelief.
The 11th World Congress will serve as a great opportunity to touch upon such topics as:
- Imaginary Americas: Non-American Transoceanic Travel Narratives
- Imaginary Worlds: American Transoceanic Narratives,
- Imaginary Americas: American Hemispheric Travel Narratives,
- The World’s Americas/The American Worlds in Cinema and Television,
- The World’s Americas/The American Worlds in Art,
- Representing the Americas/the World in Social Media: Travel Vlogs and Travel Blogs,
- Travel and Directionality of Value Transfer: Donor Cultures, Acceptor Cultures,
- Travel and Export/Import of Cultural Values: Laws, Customs, Aesthetics,
- Travel and Imposition/Appropriation of Cultural Values.
To participate, send in your application by 30 May 2023.
For more information, visit https://iasa-world.org/11th-iasa-world-congress-2023/.