Page - 9 - in >mcs_lab> - Mobile Culture Studies, Volume 2/2020

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 6 2o20 (Travel) Birgit Englert, Sandra Vlasta | Travel Writing 9 are carefully dissected, their underlying layers disclosed. Although the authors have diverse aca- demic backgrounds and thus differ in terms of their approaches, all of the articles build, among other things, on research in travel writing studies and/or mobility studies. Travel writing studies is a relatively young but lively and growing field that analyses travel writing from a literary and cultural studies point of view. A number of handbooks and intro- ductions published over the past twenty years or so (see Hulme and Youngs 2002; Keller and Siebers 2017; Pettinger and Youngs 2019; Schaff 2020; Thompson 2011; Youngs 2013; Youngs and Forsdick 2012), the launching of academic journals on the subject (such as Studies in Travel Writing), and the founding of dedicated research centres, such as the Centre for Travel Writing Studies at Nottingham Trent University, show that travel writing studies is now an established academic field. The recently published Keywords for Travel Writing Studies: A Critical Glos- sary (Forsdick, Kinsley, and Walchester 2019) confirms the extent to which the field, which transcends various disciplines, is characterized by a shared critical vocabulary. Scholars in the field mostly engage with texts that record journeys that have actually taken place rather than purely fictitious travel accounts. Accordingly, we follow this definition of travel writing in this issue. We understand travel as a specific form of mobility characterized by certain elements and thus as distinguishable from other forms of mobility (such as flight and exile), even though the exact delimitation may sometimes be blurred. Over the past few decades, research on travel writing has concentrated on a number of topics: certain groups of travellers and modes of travel have been studied, such as the travelling nobility and elites (see Freller 2007; Leibetseder 2004), the travelling middle class on the Grand Tour/Bildungsreise (see Black 1985; Brilli 2001; Findlen 2009; Hibbert 1987), female travellers (see Bassnett 2002; Findlen 2009; Foster 1990; Habinger 2006; Siegel 2004), and travellers on foot (see Albrecht and Kertschner 1999; Solnit 2000). The research in this field has been dedicated to particular destinations, with Italy being the most popular (see for instance Aldo Bertozzi 2007; Brilli 2001; Egger 2006; Grimm, Breymayer and Erhart 1990; Pfister 1996), alt- hough travellers in France and England have also been studied extensively (see Grosser 1989 and Struck 2006 on France, for instance, and Maurer 1987, Dankelmann 1999, and Fischer 2004 on England). Studies on smaller European countries and Central Europe remain rare (see Balogh and Leitgeb 2014; Struck 2006). In English-speaking countries, studies on travel writing have been highly influenced by Edward Said’s Orientalism (2003), which revealed the links between travelling, representa- tion, and (imperial) power and which triggered intensive study of travel writing from the 1980s onwards, from a postcolonial and cultural studies perspective. Scholars were particularly inte- rested in the question of how notions such as exoticism were constructed via travelogues (and other artefacts) as part of the imperial project (Schmidt 2015). Accordingly, in the context of postcolonial and intercultural studies, travel writing on destinations in Africa (see Miller 1985; Youngs 1994), the Americas (see Pratt 1992), India (see Inden 1990; Suleri 1991), and the South Pacific (see Küchler Williams 2004) has been scrutinized. This also led to the perception (if not the criticism) that travel writing was a rather conservative genre and resulted in a more concen- trated focus on colonial contexts.