Decolonising Travel Studies: Sources and Approaches
10-12 November 2021
University of Warwick (online via Zoom)
(All times are GMT+0/UTC)
The Hakluyt Society, the Global History and Culture Centre (GHCC) at
the University of Warwick, and Medieval and Early Modern Orients
(MEMOs), invite you to the Hakluyt Society Symposium 2021 –
Decolonising Travel Studies: Sources and Approaches. Attendance is
free and all are welcome.
To register, please email: hakluytsymposium2021@gmail.com
Contacts: Natalya Din-Kariuki (Natalya.Din-Kariuki@warwick.ac.uk) and
Guido van Meersbergen (G.van-Meersbergen@warwick.ac.uk)
Day 1: Wednesday 10 November 2021
14.00-14.15: Introduction and Welcome (Natalya Din-Kariuki and Guido
van Meersbergen)
14.15-15.45: Panel 1: Decolonising Travel Studies in Theory and
Practice (Chair: Caitlin Vandertop)
•Daniel Vitkus: “Racialized Capitalism, Intersectionality, and Early
Modern Travel Studies”
•Denise Saive Castro: “Contemplating Slavery on the African West
Coast: A Comparison of Portuguese and Dutch Travel Accounts with the
Correspondence of Nepemba Angiga, also known as Afonso I of Kongo”
•Sander Molenaar: “Deconstructing the ‘Imperial Gaze’ in Chinese
Travel Writing: A New Look at Ma Huan’s Ying ya sheng lan (Overall
Survey of the Ocean’s Shores)”
•Carl Thompson: “Conjectures on Travel Writing as World Literature”
15.45-16.00: Break
16.00-17.15: Panel 2: Travel and Decolonisation Today (Chair: Ladan
Niayesh)
•Sandhya Patel: “Peopling the Pitt Rivers Cook-Voyage Collections on
the World Wide Web”
•R. Benedito Ferrão: “The Black Antarctic: Decoloniality and Queer
Ecology in Mojisola Adebayo’s Moj of the Antarctic”
•Joanne Lee: “All Roads Lead to Africa: Decolonizing the Imperial
City”
17.15-17.30: Break
17.30-19.00: Panel 3: Images and Imaginations: Visual and Cartographic
Sources (Chair: Daniel Carey)
•Farah Bazzi: “Seeing the ‘Maghreb’ by Looking at the Americas:
Rethinking the Transmission of Cartographic Knowledge in the Ottoman
World through the Piri Reis Map of 1513”
•Louise McCarthy: “Cartographic Silence and Muted Voices: Reading the
Subtexts of British Maps of Early Colonial Virginia (1606-1624)
•Sara Caputo: “Travels Carved on the Pathless Ocean: European Ship
Tracks and (De)colonial Mobility”
•Apurba Chatterjee: “Travel, Visuality, and the British Indian Empire:
James Baillie Fraser in the Himalayas”
Day 2: Thursday 11 November 2021
09.30-10.45: Roundtable 1: Decolonial Orientations: Travel Studies and
the Pre-Modern Islamic World by Medieval and Early Modern Orients
(Chair: Lubaaba Al-Azami)
•Speakers: Amrita Sen, Maria Shmygol, Nat Cutter, and Hassana Moosa
10.45- 11.15: Break
11.15- 12.15: Roundtable 2: A Student-led Conversation by participants
of the Warwick Undergraduate Research Support Scheme (Chair: Guido van
Meersbergen)
•Speakers: Chhaya Rai, Nida Mahmud, Kevin Molloy, Declan Dadzie
12.15-12.30: Publishing with the Hakluyt Society: What and How?
•Speaker: Katherine Parker
12.30-13.15 Lunch break
13.15-14.30 Panel 4: Black Travellers in the Twentieth Century:
Oppression and Liberation (Chair: Christine Okoth)
•Kiranpreet Kaur: “Eslanda Robeson’s Congo Diary”
•Zachary Peterson: “Africans in America and Americans in Africa: The
American Committee on Africa, its Travels to the Continent, and its
Sponsorship of African Travelers to the US”
•Janet Remmington: “Navigating Apartheid: Black Women Travelling”
14.30-14.45: Break
14.45-16.00: Panel 5: New Sources, Genres, and Perspectives (Chair:
Julia Kuehn)
•Judith E. Bosnak: “Javanese Language Travelogues as ‘New’ Sources for
the History of Travel”
•Gábor Gelléri: “Colonial Tourism, De-centered”
•Ettore Morelli: “The Diary of Morena Abraham Aaron Moletsane mor’a
Moroa-ha-a-buse, 1952: African Traveller and Historian”
16.00-16.30: Break
16.30-18.00: KEYNOTE LECTURE: “Travelling While Black” (Chair: Natalya
Din-Kariuki)
SPEAKER: Nanjala Nyabola
Author of Travelling While Black (2020)
Day 3: Friday 12 November 2021
09.30-10.45: Roundtable 3: Decolonial Approaches to British Sources
and Archives by TIDE (Chair: Nandini Das)
•Speakers: Haig Smith, Lauren Working, Emily Stevenson, and Tom
Roberts
10.45-11.15: Break
11.15-12.30: Panel 6: Recovering Indigenous Voices (Chair: Joan-Pau
Rubiés)
•Zoltán Biedermann: “Seeing the Invisible Hand: Retrieving Indigenous
Agency from Early Iberian Travel Accounts, c.1500”
•Lucas Aleixo Pires dos Reis & Roberth Daylon: “‘Foods that are
self-served’: Methodologies for the Study of Unstated African
Presences in Travel Accounts”
•Anna Melinda Testa-De Ocampo: “Alexander Dalrymple and the Natural
Curiosities in Sooloo (1770)”
12.30-13.30: Lunch break
13.30-14.45: Panel 7: South Asian Travellers, Religion, and
Transnationalism (Chair: Somak Biswas)
•Daniel Majchrowicz: “Muslim Women and Travel Writing: Rediscovering a
Forgotten Archive”
•Muhamed Riyaz Chenganakkattil: “‘Connected Stories’ of Muslim
Pilgrimage to Mecca: Decolonizing the Travel Writing through South
Asian Hajj Narratives”
•Nupur Bandyopadhyay: “A Journey to Justice: Transnational Civil
Rights and Ramnath Biswas, an Indian Globetrotter from Bengal,
1937-40”
14.45-15.15 Break
15.15-16.30: Panel 8: Reorienting Travel Studies: Perspectives from
Europe’s Fringes (Chair: Eva Johanna Holmberg)
•Sharyl Corrado: “Evgeniia Maier (1865-1951): Noblewoman and Nomad”
•Janne Lahti: “Settler Colonial Eyes in Unexpected Places: Finnish
Travel Writers and Settler Colonization on the Arctic Ocean”
•Nadiya Chushak: “‘First female travel blogger’: Sofiya
Yablonska-Oudin’s Works and their Perception in Contemporary Ukraine”
16.45-18.00: Decolonising Travel Studies in the Classroom (Chair:
Natalya Din-Kariuki and Eva Johanna Holmberg)
•Speakers: Nandini Das, Jyotsna Singh, Nedda Mehdizadeh, and Gerald
Maclean
18.00: CONFERENCE ENDS