Considerations of Time and Place
Multidirectional Cosmopolitanism: Meandering across Borders with W.G. Sebald
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Daniel P. Reynolds
W.G. Sebald's literary works have been lauded for blurring boundaries of genre and medium as much as time and space. This paper investigates the apparent aimlessness that characterizes his itinerant narrators, who travel in search of elusive memories and connections, as an enactment of critique as a non-teleological process. While many critics who have focused on the melancholic themes of homelessness and belonging in Sebald, this paper departs from previous readings by adapting theories of collective memory that have emerged since Sebald’s untimely death in 2001. Specifically, this paper adapts the concepts of cosmopolitan memory developed by Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, as well as the notion of multidirectional memory articulated by Michael Rothberg, to account for the generative insights offered by Sebald’s first-person narrators as they travel across borders. In exploring how Sebald’s travel writing anticipates ideas foundational to these more recent theoretical innovations, this paper also situates Sebald’s own writing as a performance of adaptation – of media, of critique, and of literary predecessors. Travel becomes the occasion for Sebald’s narrators to muse about legacies of cultural inheritance, which become ways of making sense of a world oscillating between change and stagnation. Historical figures like Casanova, Stendhal, and Kafka materialize in Sebald’s mixed-media novels as travel companions whose works lend themselves to fresh interpretations, even as they help make sense of the narrator’s own fleeting experiences en route.
The "Thinking," "Conceited," and "Know-Nothing" Traveler: What Margaret Fuller's Travel Tropes Teach us about Cultural Insularity and Global Citizenship
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Renee Schlueter
During the decades before and immediately after the Civil War, American tourists flocked to Italy. Unlike earlier, educated, wealthy travelers broadened and polished from their year-long immersion in the Italian art, culture, and history of the Eternal City, many later travelers (creatives aside) were smugly content to rush through Roman culture, art galleries, and historical spaces, in what Margaret Fuller satirically called a "nine-days wonder." Unlike most Americans, however, Fuller's feminist, radical vision of democracy was shaped by her three-year Italian (largely Roman) residence. This paper attends closely to Fuller's use of contrasting travel tropes, as a means of reflecting on mid-nineteenth-century cultural insularity and American democratic shortcomings. It explores how Fuller’s awakening in Rome shaped ideas about mindful travel and education that resonate in contemporary conversations about preservation and global citizenship.
Utilizing a Graphic Novel, Instructional Design and Community of Practice: A Framework for a Cultural, Place-based Educational Resource
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Patsy Iwasaki
Arts, literature, instructional design and educational practice were integrated to create a relevant place-based educational resource engaging interdisciplinary approaches and perspectives. This study continues the examination of how an original graphic novel about a 19th-century labor advocate was utilized to inform, give insight and promulgate heritage, culture and resilience. Since the 18th century, workers from Asia and Europe were recruited for the numerous sugarcane plantations along the Hāmākua Coast of Hawaiʻi island. However, the once thriving region has been affected by the demise of the sugar industry, highway infrastructure, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Historically, the community practiced resiliency when it built a memorial in 1994 to honor the legacy of Katsu Goto as a labor champion, not a victim of racism and oppression when he was lynched in 1889 for his advocacy of plantation laborers. A community of practice of educators from intermediate, secondary and college educational levels utilized the graphic novel in their curriculum with copies provided by a grant. Motivational and instructional frameworks guided the study’s learning design process. The qualitative and quantitative findings, field notes and communication provided data triangulation. After analysis and interpretation were completed, the results significantly confirmed that the instructional resource and the community of educators, had a positive, educational impact upon students. This study contributed to sustaining the heritage, culture and resilience of the region and beyond. It has significant potential to influence the broad possibilities of the innovative, interdisciplinary transfer and translation of ideas, research and collaboration in humanities education.
Treasure Hunters, Collectors, Popes, and Kings: Travel and Heritage Preservation
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ronald Weber
Watching the daily news, traveling, teaching classes, remembering family, we all encounter the past—at various times more clearly and more personally than at others. Why have certain details of history been forgotten and more trivial facts have persevered? There are few universal answers, but travel has proven to be a great way to enhance how we realize the past and help to foster heritage preservation. In the case of Britain’s Cavendish family, the Dukes and Duchesses of Devonshire, we get a view of how travel enabled family members to develop and preserve the cultural heritage we now enjoy from ancient Rome. From their accumulated letters and memoirs, we get a view of how travel in Italy inspired family members to become collectors and patrons of Italian art, helping to develop and preserve the cultural heritage of Modern Italy. This paper pays close attention to how Cavendish women in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when residing or traveling in Italy, participated in the rediscovery and preservation of Rome’s historical heritage and shaped what we know of ancient Rome today.
