Please note that this module was available
from 2006 to 2010, but has since been
withdrawn and is no longer available.

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Tutor: Professor David Arnold

This undergraduate second-year option module has three principal aims: (1) to provide students with a critical introduction to the use of travel writing as a historical source and to the scholarly literature relating to it; (2) to encourage students to think beyond national and imperial boundaries and to consider, through travel writing, the interconnectedness of Eurasia and its histories; (3) to invite students to address questions of 'difference' across European and Asian societies, as reflected in travel writing and especially through ideas of 'Orientalism'.

The module examines selected texts representing different types of travel writing, produced from different perspectives and for different kinds of audiences. The selected texts include both European and non-European writers. The module is concerned with a long period - 600 years from the mid 13th to the mid 19th centuries - in order to show how travel writing and the inspiration behind it changed over time. Broadly speaking, the module will consider three periods of travel writing: medieval, early modern and colonial. It will look at accounts from across Eurasia, but particular attention will be given to South Asia.