MA Candidate to Speak in Dresher Center "Currents" series

Tue, 19 Nov 2019 13:17:13 -0500

Join us in the Dresher Center Wednesday Nov. 20 for "Currents: Humanities Work Now," where Corbin Jones will be discussing his current research. Corbin Jones, M.A. Candidate in the Text, Technologies, and Literature and the Dresher Center's Fall 2019 Graduate Student Research Fellow, will be delivering his talk, "ibn Batuta and the Fashioned Self Image." An abstract of the talk is copied below.

The event will begin at noon, following lunch served at 11:30 AM, in the Dresher Center Conference Room, PAHB 216.

ibn Batuta and the Fashioned Self Image

Corbin Jones, M.A. Candidate in the Text, Technologies, and Literatures Program; Fall 2019 Graduate Student Research Fellow

The 13th century Maghrebi judge and consummate scholar ibn Battuta can be known as witty, pious, cosmopolitan, and a bit egotistical through his travel writings, among them A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling. Much of this image of the man comes from his own attempts to rhetorically define himself. The fascinating thing is that the self-image of the traveler is also fashioned by the people and things he encounters on his journey. As he seeks to display for his reader the breadth of his experience, what he truly represents is himself.