CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Proposals for Book Chapters on Rhetoric and Communication of Travel

Travel and communication are themes that has not been extensively explored by communication scholars. Intercultural scholars have studied travel as encounter but a broader exploration of travel and communication has not been studied in depth. Travel has been extensively studied as it relates to tourism, hospitality, and marketing studies. Philosophers have also explored the meaning of travel and experiences while travelling. Travel includes countless dimensions: vacationing, embodied communication, movement, encountering other cultures, experiencing difference, etc. This topic continues to gain social and cultural currency, as well as in various relevant industries. Paradigmatic shifts such as in how and where people work in a post-pandemic world, Gen Z’s demand for a better work-life balance, and surges in “digital nomad” visas are just a few indicators of why this area of study demands attention. We seek to bring the study of travel alongside our study of communication. The many approaches to reflecting on communication can be brought to bear on the specific context and content of travel.

This call for book chapter proposals invites contributors to examine travel and communication using a variety of approaches: including rhetorical studies, philosophical inquiry, narrative, critical, dialogic, semiotic, global, cross-cultural, and media studies. We welcome theoretical and practical approaches to the subject. 

In this edited volume, we explore multiple dimensions of how travel and communication intersect, interact and inform each other. We communicate about travel as lived experience, as performative expressions, for monetizing purposes, for personal reflection, etc.

We seek to explore themes included but not limited to: What does travel mean?

How do we talk about or describe our travel experiences? In anticipation of, during or after the travel? Through print, video, or social media?     

What are our reasons why we travel: work, social media inspiration, vacation, religious or spiritual reasons, for education, to make money, medical tourism, etc. And, how do our reasons for travel impact our experience of traveling?  

In travel, one expects and faces unexpected and unfamiliar situations that are openings for multiple communicative interpretations. This book explores “discursive openings” about how we travel and ways we communicate about, before and during travel. Whose voices sound, are heard, participate in and echo in travel? How do we experience travel differently based on our identities, privileges, and/or histories?

We initiated our exploration of these themes for a panel on travel presented and discussed within the Communication Ethics Division at the 2023 National Communication Association conference. This panel revealed a broader interest in scholarship about travel and communication.

For our edited volume on the rhetoric and communication of travel the chapter topics might include:

• Consumerism, consumption and economics: Destination marketing, local, regional or global tourism, vacation rentals and home sharing services
• Social media: travel influencers, travel live-streaming, content creation 
• Experiences of socioeconomic difference of and while traveling
• Ethical dimensions in travel: tourist gaze, sustainable tourism
• Crises while traveling: safety, civil unrest, natural disasters  
• Volunteer tourism, Voluntourism
• Political dimensions to travel: global travel, the nation state, citizen journalism, crossing borders
• Religious or spiritual travel: retreat cultures, pilgrimages, wellness tourism, immersion trips
• Museums, memorials, histories, national parks

Contributors are also invited to conceive alternative topics of interest and pitch them to the editors.

The audience for this book is undergraduate and graduate college and university students, scholars, but also general audiences. Chapters should be around 5000 words.

Co-editors are Margaret M. Mullan, Ph.D., associate professor in Department of Communication at East Stroudsburg University and Jenna M. Lo Castro, Ph.D., associate professor in School of Communication at Point Park University. 

For consideration, submit your name, position, academic affiliation, email, an original proposed chapter title, key words, a brief description of the chapter’s proposed contents a and 500-word abstract. The description should detail how the proposed chapter fits into the larger volume. All submissions will be subject to a peer review process, and only accepted chapters will be included in the edited volume. Submissions are due by Friday, May 16, 2025.

Notification of acceptance is expected July 2nd and completed first drafts will be due by Friday, January 5, 2026.

Direct submissions and inquiries to Margaret Mullan at mmullan@esu.edu or Jenna Lo Castro jlocastro@pointpark.edu