TRAVEL + LEISURE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF NANCY NOVOGROD AMONG EXPERTS ON “NEW MEANINGS OF TRAVEL” PANEL AT MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE

SOUTH HADLEY, Mass. -- What new ways of writing and thinking about travel have recently emerged? How has globalization—cultural, economic, and demographic—changed our sense of travel? And why is tourism one of the world’s biggest industries?

These and other questions that inform our shifting ideas of travel will be the topic of discussion Thursday, November 14, when the Harriet L. and Paul M. Weissman Center for Leadership at Mount Holyoke College presents “New Meanings of Travel in Contemporary Travel Writing,” a panel presentation featuring a distinguished group of guest experts. The panelists are Ian Buruma, journalist and novelist; Caryl Phillips, novelist, travel writer, and professor of English at Barnard College; and Mount Holyoke alumna Nancy Novogrod, senior vice president and editorial director of American Express Publishing and editor-in-chief of Travel + Leisure. Michael Gorra, professor of English at Smith College, will moderate. The evening is part of the Weissman Center’s Destinations: New Meanings of Travel series, cosponsored by the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, the Center for Environmental Literacy, and the MHC Arts Committee. The event, which is open to the public and wheelchair accessible, takes place at 7:30 pm in the Art Building’s Gamble Auditorium.

“The hope,” moderator Gorra says, “is to look at these questions from many different angles, by putting together people whose work deals with very different aspects of travel. While Nancy Novogrod is, perhaps, primarily concerned with travel as a business and a form of leisure, Caryl Phillips and Ian Buruma both use travel as a mode of witness and political exploration. These are kinds of travel that don’t often talk to each other.”

About the panelists and moderator:

Ian Buruma was educated in Holland and Japan and has spent many years in Asia. He writes political and cultural commentary on Asia for a number of Western publications and is the author of a novel and many works of nonfiction. His latest book is Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing.

Michael Gorra teaches courses on English and American fiction at Smith College. He is the author of The English Novel at Mid-Century: From the Leaning Tower and After Empire: Scott, Naipaul, Rushdie. Gorra is a prolific book reviewer for the New York Times Book Review, the Times Literary Supplement, and other journals. He is currently at work on a travel book about Germany.

In addition to her role as editor in chief of Travel + Leisure, Nancy Novogrod, a member of the class of 1971, is editorial director of American Express Publishing Corporation, where she oversees Departures, T+L Golf, T+L Family, and various development projects. Novogrod is a former trustee of Mount Holyoke.

Born in St. Kitts, West Indies, and educated at Oxford, Caryl Phillips is the author of eight books, including Atlantic Sound, as well as numerous scripts for film, theater, radio, and television.

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