Issues in Travel Writing:  Empire, Spectacle, and Displacement Ed. Kristi Siegel. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2002, ISBN: 0-8204-4580-0, 303 pages. $32.95. To order: Contact Peter Lang Publishing at 1-800-770-5264, at their United States website, their international website, or by e-mail, or order through Barnes & Noble - website or Amazon - website. Review copies are available by contacting publisher - (800) 770-5264 or (212) 647-7706 Description: The increased attention now devoted to studying travel writing and theory follows on the heels of a growing critical interest in autobiography (a genre closely aligned to travel writing); commentary on multiculturalism, nationalism, colonialism, and post-colonialism; and in spectacle and visual culture. The essays collected here address these diverse impulses and focus provocatively on issues of colonialism/post-colonialism, empire, identity, culture, spectacle, pilgrimage, map theory, narrative theory, diaspora, and displacement, and discuss writers as diverse as Ernest Hemingway, Theodore Roosevelt, Jean Baudrillard, Alexis de Tocqueville, Simone de Beauvoir, V. S. Naipaul, Evelyn Waugh, John McPhee, George Orwell, Graham Greene, Walter Benjamin, Constance Fredericka Gordon Cumming, Willa Cather, Elizabeth Bowen, Kurt Vonnegut, Dorothy Richardson, Jonathan Raban, Paul Theroux, Bruce Chatwin, and Doris Lessing.
	From James J. Schramer, Professor, English and Professional Writing, Youngstown State University: Regardless of the time periods associated with the travel writers they interrogate, the essays in this collection are timely. As Kristi Siegel observes in her thoughtful introduction to this splendid collection, given the world in which we live, and through which we traverse, “the sudden burgeoning of travel writing and travel studies…is logical.” If we are citizens of a global village, we need to understand how our fellow citizens perceive the legacy of colonialism and the reality of post-colonialism. To a great degree, these twin forces have shaped the world in which we live and which we struggle to comprehend. Theorizing about travel literature is not, then, a vicarious vacation from the problems of geopolitics. When conducted on the level found in Siegel’s collection, theorizing about travel literature is very much about the world we inhabit. Siegel and the other authors in this book help us to see the spectacle presented by travel literature and to understand our place within that spectacle as observers and the observed.
Table of Contents Introduction: Travel Writing and Travel Theory Kristi E. Siegel Part One - Empire: Reassessments of Imperialist Travel Writing Chapter One Race and Modernity in Theodore Roosevelt's and Ernest Hemingway's African Travel Writing Edward Whitley - University of Maryland, College Park Chapter Two British Travel Writing and Imperial Authority  Melanie Hunter - Tulsa Community College (Oklahoma) Chapter Three Travel Writing and the Imperial Subject in 1930s Prose: Waugh, Bowen, Smith, and Orwell Adam Piette University of Glasgow (Scotland) Chapter Four Contemporary German Journeys to Italy Cecilia Novero - Penn State Chapter Five Constance Fredericka Gordon Cumming's "Picturesque" Vision: A Christian, Westernized Hawai'i Andrea Feeser - Clemson University (South Carolina) Part Two - Spectacle: Mapping Cultural and Spiritual Landscapes Chapter Six Travel Writing and Spectacle: The Illusion of Knowledge and Sight Kristi E. Siegel and Toni B. Wulff - Mount Mary College Chapter Seven Baudrillard's Explorations of Tocqueville's America: Wandering in Hyperdemocracy Marco Diani - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and Institut de Recherches sur le Moderne -France Chapter Eight Simone de Beauvoir's America Day by Day: Reel to Real Gary Totten - Concordia College (Minnesota) Chapter Nine St. Lawrence and the Pagans in The Marvels of Rome Cynthia Ho - University of North Carolina, Asheville Chapter Ten John McPhee's Spiritual Journeys: The Authenticating Eye Theodore C. Humphrey - California State Polytechnic University, Pomona Chapter Eleven Kurt Vonnegut's Search for Soul Donna Foran - Mount Mary College and Marquette University Chapter Twelve Willa Cather's Nebraska Prairie: Remembering the Spirit of Its Land and People Heidi N. Sjostrom - Mount Mary College (Wisconsin) Chapter Thirteen Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage as a Journey Down to the Center of Being Maria Francisca Llantada Diaz - University of Santiago de Compostela - Spain Part Three - Displacement: Situating Identity, Home, and Diaspora Chapter Fourteen In the Ruins of Diaspora: A Southern Italian Perspective Joseph Pugliese - Macquarie University (Australia) Chapter Fifteen (Re)Visiting Der Heim: The Amazing Return to the Place You've Never Been Which Isn't There Andrew Palmer - Christ Church University College (Canterbury) Chapter Sixteen Australian Muslim Experiences of Meccan Pilgrimage or Hajj Katy Nebhan - University of Sydney (Australia) Chapter Seventeen A Million Enigmas Now: V. S. Naipaul's Use of Landscape in the Construction of the "English Self" Pallavi Rastogi - Utah State University Chapter Eighteen Jonathan Raban's Coasting and Literary Strategies in Contemporary British Travel Writing Jan Borm - Suds d’Amériques and University of Versailles at Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (France)

 

KRISTI SIEGEL is Associate Professor and Chair of English (and the Languages, Literature, and Communication Division) at Mount Mary College in Wisconsin; she earned her Ph.D. in modern studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is the author of Women's Autobiographies, Culture, Feminism (Peter Lang, 2001), and editor of  a collection of essays about women's travel writing, Gender, Genre, Identity in Women's Travel Writing (Peter Lang, 2004). She also serves as general editor for the book series Travel Writing Across the Disciplines (Peter Lang), and has published various articles on postmodern, feminist, cultural, and autobiographical theory. Home

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