ABSTRACT
At a staff training seminar at my former institution, I took part in what turned out to be a memorable and culturally revealing ice-breaking activity. The exercise was a familiar one: participants had to describe their departmental affi liations and research expertise to the person sitting next to them, after which they were to introduce their neighbour with the information gleaned to the rest of the group. After the required exchange of information had taken place and I had presented my partner (an Italian psychology specialist researching Alzheimer’s and responses to trauma), she then introduced me, to my surprise, as a researcher of human rights and tourism in Latin America. Something had defi nitely been lost in translation, for I had told my colleague that I worked on Latin American women writers (the project I was completing at the time) and on narratives of travel in the region (the project I was starting). How had I acquired this new-and, I admit to thinking at the time, slightly more radical-professional identity? I concede that my colleague might have misheard me: this was not the fi rst time that my “women writers” had been mistaken for “human rights”, for I am quite softly spoken. I admit also that some element of transference might have occurred in the light of the gap between our particular disciplines. I am not exactly sure, however, how travel narratives became tourism (although, of course, they are not unrelated) and, least of all, how such combined interests corresponded to my then location as a lecturer in an English and comparative literature department. Nevertheless, what did happen in that exchange was that Latin America emerged as a tourist destination with human rights issues. A minor misunderstanding, to be sure, but nevertheless one that has stayed with me in subsequent years as I have researched this, my second book.
