David G. Farley

I am an Associate Professor in the Institute for Writing Studies where I have taught since its founding in 2006. My research interests include travel and travel writing in the contexts of 20th century literary movements, especially Modernism, transnationalism, historiography, and the politics of seeing. I am particularly interested in the sociomaterial roots of mobility and the discourse of travel in a Global context.

My book, Modernist Travel Writing: Intellectuals Abroad, was published in 2010 by the University of Missouri Press and I have published articles and given presentations on a variety of twentieth figures, including Ezra Pound, E.E. Cummings, Rebecca West, Anton Chekhov, and W.B. Yeats. In 2013, I was recently invited to join the MLA Discussion Group on Travel and Travel Studies.

In my writing courses, I always focus on some aspect of travel in an attempt to engage students’ own experiences and identities, especially their experiences studying abroad during their time at St John’s. I use the travel text (both students’ own accounts of their various journeys and the writings of others) as an entrée to discussions of identity, culture, and politics.