African and Asian Travel Literature

Travel has been an important dimension of literature. It was particularly a prominent aspect of of English literature produced in the age of expanding British imperialism (1815-1914). Travel accounts, fictional or non-fictional, by prominent British writers were allegedly the ‘authentic’ descriptions of ‘other’ peoples and places. However, after the demise of the British Empire and the consequent immigration of formerly colonised people to Britain, especially after the Second World War (1939-1945) and to many other parts of the western world, travel literature is no longer the sole domain of Western writers but has a global resonance with several non-Western writers, deploying this genre to present the ‘counter or reversed’ gaze on ‘foreign’ and ‘native’ cultures. This seminar examines 21^st- century selected works of African and Asian travel literature to investigate how and why Africans and Asians travel and what observations about city, country, culture, and history they document in their literary creations and what insights the reader develop into African and Asian politics, economies, histories, cultures, and social norms. Although the most prominent scholar of travel literature Tim Youngs employs the term ‘travel writing’ rather than ‘travel literature’ for such accounts (2013), the seminar engages with travel texts as literature since travel experiences, based on fact or fiction, are always filtered through the writers’ imagination, rendering travel book a significant literary dimension. The course aims to cover the most fundamental features of travel literature, which has become a burgeoning field of academic inquiry. Mainly discussed and examined as a hybrid genre, absorbing elements of various other genres, it is highlighted that travel literature needs to be understood on its own terms. To meet this objective, the course explores themes such as the quest motif, the confluence of physical and inner journeys, gender and sexuality, mobile identity and shifting belongings. Drawing upon the travel theory as a reading methodology to investigate selected texts with the focus on gendered travel, moving cultures, and transcultural encounters, students will be given a thorough grounding in both theory and methodology so that they can understand how travel literature helps to decipher travel’s role in the representation and production of our globalized world. Upon completing the course, it is expected that students can show their understanding of travel theory in relation to Asian and African travel literature in the form of class presentation and response or term paper.