Heraclitus said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man.” This perhaps epitomizes the concept of this seminar “Riverine Journeys: Discovering New Selves and New Tropes." Different riverine and water journeys have been explored through multiple literary works from the Anglophone and other parts of the world since the earliest times. Rivers such as the Mississippi, the Thames, the Danube, Nile, the Tigris, the Ephorates, the Indus, the Ganges, the Volga, etc, are a subject of interest. This project explores literary works that depict how we embark on such journeys to lose ourselves, to find ourselves, and sometimes, maybe, to be transformed into someone else somewhere else–even if for a while. We travel across these fluid liminal spaces to nourish our souls and, in some bleaker instances, to cross to the other world. A river forms a calmer, less-stormy frontier than a sea, a zone where one has the leisure to speculate and reflect on oneself even when stepping out of one’s comfort zone. If on a riverboat, the journey is relatively slow as river waters are shallow, and the ship needs to maintain a specific speed limit. Because, unlike the sea, the land is visible on both sides, one feels secure looking at the banks even when temporally not treading on them. This sense of assurance makes journeying across rivers a convenient trope of self-discovery. The physical and psychological liminalities experienced along rivers have inspired authors from multiple cultures.

This seminar will explore riverine journeys on almost every continent. Besides drawing upon canonical works that explore journeying along rivers, I am also looking for less-known texts exploring traveling along these waterways. I want to invite scholars to engage in comparative analyses of different river journeys across the globe in the past and in the present––an essential literary trope that needs more attention.