Anglophone travel literature and health tourism (18th-19th century)

As members of the European Union, the larger Western world, and a globalized world, we have lived with the belief in unlimited and relatively safe traveling options. But the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020 suddenly confronted us with the dangers of infection, xenophobia, closed borders, warnings of risk zones as well as major social differences. Every pandemic has produced individual medical as well as social, political, cultural, and economic hardships and crises that effected radical changes in societies and individuals all over the world. The difference today is that we have at least more insight into how to fight such a pandemic. The narratives studied in this class stem from European and North-American Anglophone travel literature of the 18th and 19th centuries.

In our discussions, we will thematise questions of narrative perspective and genre, the representation of otherness and othering, language used to depict diseases and their effects on human behavior and traveling, health resorts in Southern Europe and their climate as well as questions of well-being.

By including medical, historical, and cultural backgrounds as well as conventions of travel writing as life writing, we aim at a thorough understanding of the intersections of disease/health, travel, and writing and of how past literary (in a broad sense) knowledge can be used to discuss present developments.

This course has been designed as an online seminar taught by professors from Germany, France and Portugal:

• Prof. Carmen Birkle, Philipps-Universität Marburg
• Prof. Jan Borm, Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines/Université Paris-Saclay
• Dr. hab. Fátima Outeirinho, Universidade do Porto

Language:

English

Certificate:

Certificate of attendance is possible. If you attend the complete course, 3 ECTS are awarded.