MIT faculty members travel the world, professionally or privately, but always with a purpose. With this in mind, we offer a new feature in the FNL, the Faculty Travelogue. We do so in the hope of receiving your travelogues about what you, the traveler, see, hear, taste, smell, and feel in the external world, the colleagues you meet, the new friends you make.
If you’re looking for inspiration, consider Mark Twain’s 1869 The Innocents Abroad, or Ludwig Boltzmann’s 1905 “A German professor’s journey into Eldorado.” The first is about Twain’s travel to Europe and the Middle East accompanying a group of pilgrims. But it is foremost a testimony of the author’s identity as an American in the expansion of the United States post-Civil War, when confronted with shattered illusions of biblical places magnified by the prejudices of his time. Boltzmann’s travelogue is about his trip to a summer school at the University of California in Berkley. It introduces us to the emerging academic enterprise of the United States through the eyes of an old-school Central European academician, who with at times self-depreciating humor finds affirmation abroad of his vulnerable self and home at the fin de siècle.
So, when you travel next, consider making us part of your journey. Whether this is abroad to untraveled destinations, a new research collaboration, a stunning exhibition, or to your birthplace that has irrevocably changed since you grew up, every travel is worth a travelogue, for it is always a journey in oneself.
Our initial Faculty Travelogue, from Havana, Cuba, begins here.
