Review of International American Studies
17 (2/2024)

Imaginary World(s): American Visions of the Outside of the Americas

The two Oceans, simultaneously connecting and separating continents, serve as hermeneutic lenses for the Americans who “read” the world outside of the Americas. The paradoxes of travel (and) writing continue to loom large in narratives created by poets, prosateurs, filmmakers, visual artists, and musicians, or simply leisure tourists, who inhabit the Americas from the North-West Passage to Tierra del Fuego, and who have explored Europe, Asia, Australia and Oceania, or those who have been experiencing the Americas hemispherically. Like in the past, also in the present, travel has been generating vivid interest owing to the ecstatic promise it carries. To many inhabitants of the Americas to whom voyaging remains unattainable, the world is, by and large, an imaginary world.

Over time, mythical, religious, ideological, and metaphysical senses have layered upon the practical dimension of the voyage, rendering it, in almost all cultures, one of the universal metaphors of human condition. The journey, involving the existential experience of change, has gained the status of a symbol of the human lifespan; it became the figure of the philosophical exploration of oneself, and a favorite trope for the search for knowledge. In its fundamental sense, as a process of discovering real spaces and unfamiliar communities, voyage, for millennia, has been considered instrumental to the exchange of knowledge, dissemination of ideas and exportation of cultural values. Acknowledging the immense complexity of the phenomenon at stake, we invite papers representing such disciplines as ethnology, anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, literary studies, linguistics, religious studies, history, or cultural geography focusing, but not limited to, the following issues:

– Imaginary Worlds: American Transoceanic Narratives
– American Hemispheric Travel Narratives
– The world in the Cinema and Television of the Americas
– The World in the Art of the Americas
– Mapping and Remapping: Cartographic Imagination vs. Hemispheric and Transoceanic Travel
– Representing the the World in American Social Media: Travel Vlogs and Travel Blogs
– Travel and Directionality of Value Transfer: Donor Cultures, Acceptor Cultures
– Travel and Export/Import/Appropriation of Cultural Values: Laws, Customs, Aesthetics
– Hemispheric and Transoceanic American Studies in the Lens of Travel Studies (Luis Turner, John Ash, Dean MacCannell, John Urry).
– Facta-Ficta and Historical Fictions in the Context of Transoceanic and Hemispheric Travel Narratives
– From Picaresque Novel to Evening News: the Evolution of Travel Genres in the Light of Hemispheric and Transoceanic American Studies
– Exile/Expulsion/Extradictions
– Peregrinations/Pilgrimages/Awakenings
– In Search of Greener Pastures: Migrations and Opportunities
– Grand Tours: American Travel Literatures and the World Legacy
– In Search of Roots: Travels to the Lands of Forefathers
– The Tourist Industry: Packaging Experience/The Tourist Gaze
– The Ethics/Aesthetics/(An)aesthetics of Travel
- Post-Human Journeys/Ecology/Technology
– Between Real and Hyperreal AI and Online Journeying

The length of the article should be between 4,000 and 6,000 words. The submissions should be delivered to the Review of International American Studies via its Online Journal System by December 30th 2023.

Submissions MUST include:
1) First Name and Family Name of the Author/Auther
2) Institutional Affiliation of the Author/Auther
3) Author/Auther's ORCID number
4) Author/Auther's website address
5) Author/Auther's email address
6) If the Author/Auther wishes to receive a complementary hard copy of the journal, the physical address to which the copy should be delivered
7) The title of the article
8) A 250-350 words' abstract of the article
9) A 250-350 words' biographical note on the Author/Auther
10) Keywords
11) Disciplines represented (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_academic_disciplines)
12) The text of the article formatted in strict accordance with the principles of the MLA Handbook (8th edition) (length between 4000 and 6000 words).
13) The bibliography of works cited formatted in strict accordance with the principles of the MLA Handbook (8th edition)
15) All images must be submitted in print quality (min. 300 dpi)
16) All copyrighted visual material must be accompanied by permissions or licences issued to the Author.

IMPORTANT: Please, bear in mind that incomplete submissions will be automatically rejected.