[ecrea] New Book Publication: Mediating Travel Writing, Mediated China

New book publication in the field of travel writing, digital ethnography 
and West-China intercultural relations
by Commong Ground Publishing (Champaign, US)

The book is titled "Mediating Travel Writing, Mediated China: The Middle 
Kingdom in Travel Books and Blogs" (2018) and is authored by Dr Stefano 
Calzati, currently Teaching Fellow in the courses of "Sociology of 
Media" and "Anthropology of Communication" at Politecnico University of 
Milan (together with prof. Matteo Ciastellardi and Prof. Derrick De 
Kerckhove) and previously Postdoc Fellow at the City University of Hong 
Kong.

Excerpt and recommendations from the back cover:

"What is the cultural value of travel writing today? How is the genre 
affected by instant communication and digital technology? To these 
questions, Calzati’s book seeks and offers an answer. In 'Mediating 
Travel Writing, Mediated China', Calzati adopts a transmedial and 
materialist perspective to explore how different medial choices impact 
on the practices of travelling and writing. The work draws upon texts in 
different languages – English, French, Italian and Chinese – which 
eventually question any neat definition of “West” and “China” as 
geopolitical concepts. By considering travel writing, at once, as an 
object of study and a conceptual frame, Calzati’s book provides a richly 
researched and theoretically sound study on contemporary mobility and 
new forms of textualization."

"'Mediating Travel Writing, Mediated China' is an important study in 
many ways: introducing dozens of contemporary travel blogs about China 
(in English, French and Italian), Stefano Calzati not only expands the 
corpus of western travel writing about China but, perhaps more 
importantly, also dismantles the binaries of the printed and the digital 
text, travel writers and travel bloggers, ‘classical’ and ‘contemporary’ 
travelogues, and verbal and visual modes of communication. Any reader 
who wonders whether, or how, travel writing is evolving in the age of 
the internet, and the way in which contemporary travel writers think 
about their project in the global twenty-first century, will find 
answers in in this richly researched and elegantly written study." 
/Julia Kuehn, Professor in Nineteenth-Century Literature and in Travel 
Writing at the University of Hong Kong/


"Aside from the usual contention that travel writing is a politicized 
genre, Stefano Calzati investigates the materiality of the genre by 
comparing how different media (travel books and travel blogs) are used 
in different cultures (European, American,Chinese) for shaping the 
travelling and writing experiences and their presentation. Herein lies 
the additional gain, beyond travel writing studies, of this 
knowledgeable and inspiring book: travel writing becomes a symbol for a 
more profound reflection about the change in contemporary strategies for 
making sense of the world, the other, and the self."/Roberto Simanowski, 
acknowledged expert in Media Studies and Digital Cultures./



---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please
use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at
http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------