HI3K2-30 A Global History of Travel: Odyssey to Aeroplane
Introductory description
This final-year advanced option explores the long history of travel and travel writing from Homer’s Odyssey to present-day tourism. Taking a global perspective, the module provides students with a broad chronological and geographical framework to explore critical themes and concepts in the literature on travel and travel writing, including questions relating to gender, race, Orientalism, colonialism, sexuality, and relations between Self and Other and between humans and their environment. This module makes use of a range of primary sources, including travel accounts, travel advice literature, maps, paintings, and engravings, and draws on approaches from history, literature, anthropology, and postcolonial studies.
Module aims
In weekly seminars organised chronologically and thematically, students will follow Asian, African, and European travellers on their journeys, engaging with their wonder about strange lands and peoples or despair about shipwreck and enslavement. We will analyse cultural categories such as the savage and the exotic, and engage with theories about eye-witnessing, knowledge-making, mental geographies, and representation. Over the course of this module students will develop an understanding of the different forms, technologies, and traditions of global travel as well as their effects, including the expansion of economic, religious, and colonial connections, the development of discourses of human difference, and the roots of modern tourism.
Outline syllabus
This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.
Term 1
- Travel and Travel Writing: A Global Genre
- Herodotus and Zhang Qian: Travel and ‘the Other’ in the Ancient World
- Xuanzang and Ennin: The Medieval Buddhist Experience
- Pilgrimage and Hajj: Spiritual Journeys in Christianity and Islam
- Fact and Fabrication: Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta
- Reading week – no seminar
- Cannibals, Antipodes & Prester John: Travel and Mental Geographies
- New Worlds and the Trope of Discovery: Columbus to Cook
- Savage and Civilized: Travel and Ethnography in Europe, India, and China
- Europe Observed: Islamic Travellers in Christian Lands
Term 2
11. Voyages Gone Wrong: Shipwreck and Captivity
12. How to Travel? Ars Apodemica and the Grand Tour
13. The Male Gaze: Sexuality and the Exotic in Pacific Voyaging
14. A Female Gaze? Women's Travel Writing and Alterity
15. Forced Travel: Narratives of the Enslaved
16. Reading week – no seminar
17. Scientific Travel, Romanticism, and the Natural World
18. Travel and Imperialism in the Age of Livingstone
19. Travellers from the Global South
20. Tourism and the Environment in a Postcolonial World
Term 3
21. Essay Workshop
22. Essay Workshop
Learning outcomes
By the end of the module, students should be able to:
- Demonstrate a systematic knowledge and understanding of the forms and traditions of global travel and its effects on past societies and the world today, as well as of traditions of travel writing and travellers’ engagement with foreign societies
- Critically analyse and evaluate a broad range of primary sources relating to the history of travel and travel writing, including a range of textual and visual sources, through a multi-disciplinary lens
- Effectively communicate ideas, and make informed, coherent and persuasive arguments, relating to the history of travel and travel writing
- Critically review and consolidate theoretical, methodological, and historiographical ideas relating to themes in the literature on travel and travel writing, including gender, race, Orientalism, colonialism, sexuality, and the environment
Indicative reading list
Reading lists can be found in Talis
Specific reading list for the module
Subject specific skills
See learning outcomes.
Transferable skills
See learning outcomes.
Study time
| Type | Required |
|---|---|
| Seminars | 18 sessions of 2 hours (12%) |
| Tutorials | 4 sessions of 1 hour (1%) |
| Private study | 260 hours (87%) |
| Total | 300 hours |
Private study description
History modules require students to undertake extensive independent research and reading to prepare for seminars and assessments. As a rough guide, students will be expected to read and prepare to comment on three substantial texts (articles or book chapters) for each seminar taking approximately 3 hours. Each assessment requires independent research, reading around 6-10 texts and writing and presenting the outcomes of this preparation in an essay, review, presentation or other related task.
Costs
No further costs have been identified for this module.
You must pass all assessment components to pass the module.
Assessment group A2
| Weighting | Study time | Eligible for self-certification | |
|---|---|---|---|
Assessment component |
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| Seminar contribution | 10% | No | |
Reassessment component |
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| 1000 word reflection | Yes (extension) | ||
Assessment component |
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| 1500 word essay | 10% | Yes (extension) | |
Reassessment component is the same |
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Assessment component |
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| 3000 word source based essay | 40% | Yes (extension) | |
Reassessment component is the same |
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Assessment component |
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| 3000 word essay | 40% | Yes (extension) | |
Reassessment component is the same |
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Feedback on assessment
Written feedback and optional individual tutorials.
Courses
This module is Optional for:
- Year 3 of UENA-VQ32 Undergraduate English and History
- Year 4 of UENA-VQ33 Undergraduate English and History (with Intercalated year)
-
UHIA-V1V8 Undergraduate History and Philosophy (with Year Abroad and a term in Venice)
- Year 3 of V1V8 History and Philosophy (with Year Abroad and a term in Venice)
- Year 4 of V1V8 History and Philosophy (with Year Abroad and a term in Venice)
- Year 3 of UHIA-V1V7 Undergraduate History and Philosophy (with a term in Venice)
-
UHIA-VM14 Undergraduate History and Politics (with Year Abroad and a term in Venice)
- Year 3 of VM14 History and Politics (with Year Abroad and a term in Venice)
- Year 4 of VM14 History and Politics (with Year Abroad and a term in Venice)
- Year 3 of UHIA-VM13 Undergraduate History and Politics (with a term in Venice)
-
UHIA-VL16 Undergraduate History and Sociology (with Year Abroad and a term in Venice)
- Year 3 of VL16 History and Sociology (with Year Abroad and a term in Venice)
- Year 4 of VL16 History and Sociology (with Year Abroad and a term in Venice)
- Year 3 of UHIA-VL15 Undergraduate History and Sociology (with a term in Venice)
This module is Core option list A for:
- Year 3 of UHIA-V102 Undergraduate History (Renaissance and Modern History Stream)
This module is Option list A for:
- Year 3 of UHIA-V100 Undergraduate History
- Year 4 of UHIA-V101 Undergraduate History (with Year Abroad)
This module is Option list B for:
- Year 3 of UHIA-V1V5 Undergraduate History and Philosophy
- Year 4 of UHIA-V1V6 Undergraduate History and Philosophy (with Year Abroad)
- Year 3 of UHIA-VM11 Undergraduate History and Politics
- Year 4 of UHIA-VM12 Undergraduate History and Politics (with Year Abroad)
- Year 3 of UHIA-VL13 Undergraduate History and Sociology
- Year 4 of UHIA-VL14 Undergraduate History and Sociology (with Year Abroad)