General Introduction
– The Dennis Miller ratio
– What’s on the blog? And where’s that McLaren review?
– On the rhetoric trilogy
– A string of feel-good clichés

Beginning with the Personal
– David’s frequent road trips
– Nathan’s front porch
– Michial stays in the hotel room
– Planes, planes, planes
– Email us: Should Nathan have an in-car DVD player?

The Home/Road Dichotomy
– David free-associates
– Parochialism vs. cosmopolitanism
– Exile at home, exile on the road
– The travails of being a rock star
– The interdependence of the dichotomy

Biblical Folks on the Move
– Sojourning with the Hebrews
– Striving for the unseen
– Christian missionaries
– Psalms of Ascent and Psalms of Exile

Movement in the Middle Ages
– Viking as a gerund
– The pilgrimage
– Chintzy souvenirs and Medieval hipsters
– Margery Kempe as the first ugly American
– Class implications of pilgrimages
– The co-op pilgrimage

Renaissance and Enlightenment Travel
– Colonization as travel
– American exceptionalism
– The end of British colonialism (at least in the Americas)
– The need for European travel
– The other kind of colonialism

American Spatiality
– Vaguely Western and Southern movement
– From town to country
– The trucker movement and cowboy musicians
– American suburbs and highways
– Study-abroad programs and spring-break trips

Vacations
– Spring break, Austen style!
– In which we get jealous of our rich students
– The Banana Family goes to Disney World
– Pilgrimages vs. vacations

1,000 Places to See Before You Die
– St. Augustine
– Istanbul (Not Constantinople)
– The mid-sized city

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey. New York: Penguin, 1996.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. New York: Oxford UP, 2008.

Duffy, Eamon. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580. New Haven: Yale UP, 2005.

Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin, 2006.

Karl, Frederick R. American Fictions 1940-1980: A Comprehensive History and Critical Evaluation. New York: Harper Collins, 1983.

Kempe, Margery. The Book of Margery Kempe. Trans. Barry Windeatt. New York: Penguin, 2000.

Paine, Thomas. Common Sense. New York: Penguin, 1982.

Steinbeck, John. Travels with Charley in Search of America. New York: Penguin, 2002.

Tennyson, Alfred Lord. “Ulysses.” The Major Works. Ed. Adam Roberts. New York: Oxford UP, 2009.