With social and economic boundaries receding, transnationalism is a fast-growing phenomenon in the world. The article highlights the journey undertaken in the novel Life of Pi by the protagonist across several countries, justifying the thought that staying unconditionally loyal to one nation is futile. In contemporary times with a shift in social, economic, and cultural terms, the nation stands deterritorialized. Reaching out across borders in a world where distance and time have crumbled is looked upon as the beginning of the idea of transnationalism. Even the relationship of the protagonist with the unexplored islands has undergone change. Bereft of family, he is a castaway on unknown terrain, a victim of the unforeseen wrath of nature and in intimidation of the island, which he has to leave soon. Shifting focus of the present humanity is explored in the article, establishing the argument of change in the contemporary thought and lifestyle.

Naomi M. Leite, Quetzil E. Castañeda, and Kathleen M. Adams, eds., The Ethnography of Tourism: Edward Bruner and Beyond (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2019), ix + 303 pp., ISBN 978-1-4985-1633-4, $95.00 (hardcover)Sergio González Varela, Capoeira, Mobility, and Tourism: Preserving an Afro-Brazilian Tradition in a Globalized World (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2019), 184 pp., ISBN 978-1-4985-7032-9, $90 (hardcover)Sarah LeFanu, Something of Themselves: Kipling, Kingsley, Conan Doyle and the Anglo-Boer War (London: Hurst & Co, 2020), viii + 408 pp., ISBN: 978178733098, $29.95 (hardcover)Bryan S.R. Grimwood, Heather Mair, Kelle Caton, and Meghan Muldoon, Tourism and Wellness: Travel for the Good for All? (Lanham MD: Lexington Books, 2018), xxxi+ 218 pp., 978-1-4985-6329-190000, $95 (hardcover)

Will Buckingham. Stealing with the Eyes: Imaginings and Incantations in Indonesia (London: HAUS Publishing, 2018), 230pp., ISBN 978-1-909-96142-5, $19.50 (paperback).Lauren Miller Griffith and Jonathan Marion. Apprenticeship Pilgrimage: Developing Expertise through Travel and Training (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2018), xxx+171 pp., ISBN: 978-1-4985-2990-7, $90 (hardcover).Brooke A. Porter and Heike A. Schänzel, eds., Femininities in the Field: Tourism and Transdisciplinary Research (Bristol: Channel View Publications, 2018), xiv + 213 pp., ISBN-13: 978-1-84541-649-2, $39.95 (paperback).Edyta M. Bojanowska. A World of Empires: The Russian Voyage of the Frigate Pallada (Cambridge MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018), viii + 373 pp., ISBN: 978-0-674-97640-5, $35 (hardcover).Efterpi Mitsi. Greece in Early English Travel Writing, 1596–1682 (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), x + 206 pp., ISBN: 978-3-319-62611-6, £74.99 (hardcover).

Discussions of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European travel have long tended to over-apply the model of the grand tour. It is increasingly recognized now that many British journeys to the Continent knew different motivations and itineraries, and were made from different subject positions than that of the young male aristocrat. An alternative model proposed for female travelers has its own limitations, however. It presents women as more open-minded than men, with a greater eye for detail and keen to escape patriarchal confinement at home. Yet female travelers’ wish and capacity to offer an alternative to the grand-tourist gaze was limited. Still, travel, travel writing, and publishing offered women a chance to explore new social models and lifestyles and develop new forms of personal independence.

This article analyzes the means of self-representation, the conflicts between self/other, and the conscious and unconscious quest for identity by the writer. It attempts to understand travel narratives as being about the journey undertaken in a quest for identity by the traveler/writer, wherein apart from the physical journey of the author the emphasis is laid on the emotional and psychological journey within the author.

Diane Comer. The Braided River: Migration and the Personal Essay (Otago University Press, 2019), 304 pp., ISBN 9781988531533, $35 (paperback).

This article focuses on the study of the relationship between Islam, travel, and learning by conducting a case study on Indonesian Muslim students who studied (or are studying) in Saudi Arabia. Specifically, it examines the changing dynamics of these students who traveled, immigrated to, and studied in Saudi Arabia in search of knowledge from previous centuries to the contemporary era. This article shows that Indonesian students in this peninsula are deeply plural and complex, far from being a monolithic group in terms of social background, religious affiliation, political orientation, major field of study, and motive of their study, among other factors. Thus, the present article aims at demystifying and challenging the common beliefs and narratives which hold that Saudi Arabia–trained Indonesian students have been exporters of Islamist intolerance, radicalism, or even terrorism.

Generally, analyzes of Otto Nordenskjöld’s trip to the Antarctic (1901-1904) ignore the preparations that required a previous trip to Chilean-Argentine Patagonia (1894-1897). Even more, these analyzes forget the Colonial dimension of this expedition. This paper intends to fill this void considering for the analysis two images present in the Swedish travel story. The concept of iconology is proposed here as a link between the image (icons) and the story (logos). The aim is to analyze the iconology to discuss the meaningful configuration of an identity gaze—the Europeans—and a gaze on the otherness—the indigenous. The results show that in the iconology presented in the story and in the images, appear paradoxical elements that allow questioning the relevance of the identity-alterity dichotomy through the appearance of third spaces.

This article explores the ways in which nineteenth-century Argentine author, Eduarda Mansilla de García, engaged with the issues of women and modernity in her 1882 travelogue,Recuerdos de viaje. It argues that the practice of travel writing served a dual purpose for Mansilla. Publishing a travelogue about the United States enabled Mansilla to trouble Argentine period gender restrictions while at the same critically evaluate North American females. Drawing from theorizations regarding travel writing as a place of power negotiations, I unveil how Mansilla employed her travelogue as a means of validating the cultural capital of Latin American geocultural space in comparison with that of the United States. Consequently, this nineteenth-century Latin American travel narrative did more than the task of light entertainment; it engaged with significant, ongoing period transnational debates regarding modernity, gender, and nation.

This article focuses primarily on the role of the camera in representing the famous, much visited Roman Catholic shrine of Lourdes, France, and what this role tells us about the relationship between gazing, knowledge, and the body. After outlining the historical development of the shrine, the discussion proceeds to consider the growth of popular media and the cinematic gaze, the expansion of tourism, debates concerning the morality of gazing at bodies as personal cameras and smartphones becoming increasingly available and used at the shrine, the representation of human and saintly bodies, and the part played by the camera in the attempt to ensure security.