Presentation of the portal American female travelers exploring Spain (1880-1936) - AWESOME

By Sara Prieto García-Cañedo
University of Alicante

This authors' portal, the result of the AWESOME research project (American Women Exploring Spain (1880-1936) - Open Multimedia Encounters - CIGE 2022-016), aims to recover from oblivion a group of American women writer who visited Spain between 1880 and 1936, whose work has been largely overviewed. Through an interdisciplinary approach that involves experts in American women's literature, travel writing, iconographic and imagological analysis, Digital Humanities and studies on territory and anthropology, the portal offers a brief biographical introduction to these authors, as well as information on the texts they wrote after their time in Spain. It also features selected excerpts and representative images.

With this portal, we address significant aspects of women's history as well as the relationships between Spain and the United States. The visits of the authors featured in this site took place during a crucial time for the demand for women's emancipation; our focus covers the years before and after women's suffrage and the advancements in civil rights for women in the Western world. Furthermore. Besides, this period marks a crucial phase in the consolidation of Spain’s history and relationship between the United States and our country.

The study of these women travel writers contributes to the visibility of not only these authors, but also the travel book genre, which, until a few decades ago, was considered a second-tier, hybrid genre. Nowadays, the travel book genre has shifted from being a transient/or perishing text to becoming, thanks to literary criticism and cultural studies, a deserving entity, especially within the literary canon and humanistic culture in general.

While our initial focus is on American women writers from a specific historical context, we envision this portal as an open, ongoing project that could eventually incorporate the voices of other English-speaking women who visited our country during different historical periods. Through the texts and accompanying paratextual elements, we can analyze the spaces, visual experiences, territories, and the means these travelers used to convey their experiences, their view of «the other», and their role as witnesses to history. In this encounter with «the other», traveling also emerges as a pathway for communication and knowledge, facilitating the reduction of cultural barriers and prejudices.

In a contemporary world facing the inevitable disappearance of many of its ecosystems, as well as its cultural and human singularities, recovering these authors and their texts allows us to travel backin time and analyze the traces and cultural legacy they have left in the present. For this reason, although the borders between societies seem to be increasingly defined – both by geopolitical strategies and by geographical limits that appear to be more difficult to blur; this authors' portal invites us to open virtual doors to encourage a look into the past and cross-border encounters as a window to a world of opportunities and learning.