From: Caroline Ashton [[log in to unmask]]
Date sent: 12 Jan 2012


**With Apologies for Cross-Postings**

International Conference Announcement and Final Call for Papers Tourism,
Roads and Cultural Itineraries: Meaning, Memory and Development June 13
- 15, 2012, Québec, Canada

Université Laval and Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Canada
Université Paris 1, Panthéon - Sorbonne, France University of Birmingham, UK

The road connects places, peoples and pasts. From the Silk Road across
Asia to Route 66 across the USA, the road allows flows of people, goods
and ideas. Starting from simple functional pathways, roads are worn into
the ground, social life, economies and into complex networks.  As a
route connecting 'home and away', 'to and from' and, as marker for
territory, as well as a vector for cutting across territorial
boundaries, the road is embedded in tourism in its most basic sense,
allowing and directing the journey, the excursion, pilgrimage and
circuits through landscapes and cultures.  The road also provides a
fluid space for inter-cultural engagement, encounter and exchange. Along
the road, and on the road, all life passes by and leaves its mark in
terms of settlement, staging posts, signs and memories.

In the modern development of tourism the notion of the itinerary has
become well established; in many cases building on historical routes,
roads and circuits devised for non-leisure purposes.  Such itineraries
are shaped by various ideas: of access to sites of meaning, spiritual
renewal and places of cultural and commercial activity; of the 'scenic'
where the journey is transcended by the landscape it passes through; of
embodied struggle and challenge against the terrain of the road; of
adventurous incursion into forbidden territory and; of heritage and
memory where belonging and meaning is sought.

This Conference seeks to interrogate the ways in which roads, routes and
pathways and the imaginative itineraries which are layered upon them,
are developed, maintained, deviated from, contested, imagined,
remembered, travelled and experienced by, and for, tourists.  How are
itineraries devised? How do they reflect local and global histories?
What narratives do they produce and consume?  How are communities shaped
by tourist itineraries? How are touristic routes and networks shaped by
new technologies? What does it mean to 'pass through' a landscape? What
memories are generated through itineraries?

The Conference aims to provide critical dialogue beyond disciplinary
boundaries and thus we invite papers from all disciplines and fields
including: anthropology, art history, architecture, cultural geography,
cultural studies, ethnology and folklore, economics, history, heritage
studies, landscape studies, leisure studies, philosophy, political
science, sociology, tourism studies, transport studies and urban/spatial
planning.

We welcome innovative perspectives on all aspects of the Conference. Key
themes of interest include:

.             Historic and Contemporary 'Grand Tours'

.             Pilgrimage Routes - Religious, Secular and Spiritual

.             Imagined Routes - Mythic Highways and Meta-narratives

.             Forbidden Pathways and Crossing Boundaries

.             Itineraries of Memory and Memorable Places

.             Roadside Development  - Staging Posts and Stopping Places

.             Heritage Routes - Linking the Tangible and Intangible

.             Signposting and Markers of Place

.             Itineraries of War, Violence and Displacement

.             Tourists and the Electronic Highway

.             Media Representations of the Road and Routes

.             Inter-cultural Dialogue 'On the Move'

.             Walking, Motoring and 'Passing By'

.             Paths of Migration

.             Scenic Routes and the Obscene

.             The Economies of Cultural Routes

Please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words, including title and
full contact details, as an electronic file to:
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
You may submit your abstract as soon as possible but no later than
February 17th 2012. Abstracts can be written and presented in English,
French or Spanish.

Under the auspices of the UNESCO/UNITWIN NETWORK for Culture, Tourism
and Development, this conference will be an opportunity for fostering
cooperation between universities.


Caroline Ashton
Events Manager
College of Arts and Law
University of Birmingham