Review of International American Studies
17 (1/2024)

IMAGINARY AMERICAS: The Dual Continent in the Eyes of Non-American Travelers
RIAS Vol. 17, Spring–Summer (1/2024)
(Call open until October 31st 2023)

The phenomenon of travel has been fraught with paradoxes since the times immemorial. Perhaps the most striking of the travel-related controversies is the fact that although it is one of humanity’s earliest experiences, journeying has never been available to all. Regarded as one of the elementary and universal social practices, it was—and still is—the share of the few. Equally paradoxically, despite the archetypal status of the very concept of the journey, in the social and geographical sense, traveling itself is a relatively new phenomenon: the onset of leisure travel comes as late as in the 19th century, when modern means of mass transportation became popularly available and affordable. Unsurprisingly, then, many of those craving the knowledge of the distant lands, used to depend, and still largely rely on, mediated reports: texts, images, and other narratives representing fragments of experienced (or imagined) reality that always require voluntary suspension of disbelief.

Notably, in the past, journeying was largely driven by economic or political compulsion (escaping persecution, wars and conquests, trade, or search for greener pastures) or by the sense of religious duty (peregrinations and pilgrimages). It therefore comes as no surprise that along with the expansion of the intellectual horizons of the Old World that the invasion of the Americas brought, travel writing, especially in its non-fictional dimension, became particularly important. Realities described in early narratives of exploration, early epistolography, histories, personal diaries, or represented in etchings, have inspired countless “American dreams” world-wide, energizing colonial expansion and faith-based-initiatives alike. Intriguingly, however, although several centuries have passed since the Spanish Conquest, in the perceptions of billions of people across the Atlantic and the Pacific, the Americas remain, by and large, imaginary Americas. To explore these issues, 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:

– 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 Oct. 31st 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.