A Traveler's Air: A Symposium

A Traveler’s Air, a two-day symposium exploring the intersection of air and travel literature in the early modern/colonial periods (and beyond).

A Traveler’s Air will focus on the sensorial experience of travel in the Americas – and other regions as well – during the colonial/early modern period (and into the nineteenth century). It will explore air as climate, air as sound, wind and weather, animals and insects that use the air as a medium for travel, and other topics that we hope to explore during our two days together. Because this is part of a four-year program on the four elements, we view air as a heuristic device to explore the JCB’s collection as well as an intangible element in the construction of the relationship between early modern travelers and their environmental experiences. We look forward to expanding the conceptual lexicon through which we consider the relevance of the colonial archive – and the John Carter Brown Library’s collection in particular – for these sorts of questions.