The Camino de Santiago in the 21st Century: Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Global Views (Routledge Studies in Pilgrimage, Religious Travel and Tourism)

The Spanish Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage rooted in the Medieval period and increasingly active today, has attracted a growing amount of both scholarly and popular attention. With its multiple points of departure in Spain and other European countries, its simultaneously secular and religious nature, and its international and transhistorical population of pilgrims, this particular pilgrimage naturally invites a wide range of intellectual inquiry and scholarly perspectives. This volume fills a gap in current pilgrimage studies, focusing on contemporary representations of the Camino de Santiago. Complementing existing studies of the Camino's medieval origins, it situates the Camino as a modern experience and engages interdisciplinary perspectives to present a theoretical framework for exploring the most central issues that concern scholars of pilgrimage studies today.


Contributors explore the contemporary meaning of the Camino through an interdisciplinary lens that reflects the increasing permeability between academic disciplines and fields, bringing together a wide range of theoretical and critical perspectives (cultural studies, literary studies, globalization studies, memory studies, ethnic studies, postcolonial studies, cultural geographies, photography, and material culture) . Chapters touch on a variety of genres (blogs, film, graphic novels, historical novels, objects, and travel guides) , and transnational perspectives (Australia, the Arab world, England, Spain, and the United States) .

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"Global awareness and global travel have reanimated ancient pilgrimage trails as highways for health, paths toward self-awareness, and avenues for understanding among religions and nations. Sánchez y Sánchez and Hesp demonstrate how Spain's Camino de Santiago offers a template for assessing travel for transformation in a new world of sojourning." -- George Greenia, College of William & Mary, USA

"This collection brings together some of the world's leading Camino scholars to reflect on the contemporary experience of the Camino de Santiago. It will take its place alongside classic work by Dunn & Davidson. A must-read!" -- Lesley D. Harman, King's University College at Western University, Canada

--This text refers to the hardcover edition. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Samuel Sánchez y Sánchez is Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies at Davidson College, USA. His research interests include literary and cultural representations of love and death in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia, Pilgrimage Studies, and Linguistics. He has published on the literary reception of Don Quijote, early modern desire, medieval narratives of mourning, and on the connections between early modern models of readership and material culture.

Annie Hesp is an Instructor of Spanish in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Virginia Tech, USA. Her areas of research include literary and visual representations of the Camino de Santiago. She has published on the Camino as a pedagogical tool and on first-person Camino narratives.

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