Often placed under the umbrella term ‘The Grand Tour’, the scholarship surrounding the eighteenth-century world of European travel has tended to focus on an evocative and memorable series of stereotypes: the luxurious art-collecting Italianate and Frenchified aristocrats; the xenophobic, splenic and sentimental middling tourists; and the sublime-seeking Romanticists. This conference will develop a more complex understanding of eighteenth-century travel cultures, questioning the relationship between travel publications, manuscript accounts and actual experience. How did different nationalities, ages and social groups experience travel? Was the British model of the elite Grand Tour applicable to all European elites and all travellers, or did differing cultures of travel exist? To what extent were they grounded in the same cultural, physical and visual experiences? How were issues, such as nationality, inter-nationality, masculinity, femininity, and politics, explored, performed and contested through travel culture? This interdisciplinary day conference seeks to complicate the typically linear narrative of the evolution of travel culture and to interrogate established stereotypes. Papers will explore parallel, complementary and even conflicting cultures of British and European travel that existed between nations and across classes, genders and generations. Confirmed Speakers: Professor Simon Bainbridge (Lancaster), Professor Matthew Grenby (Newcastle), Professor Rosemary Sweet (Leicester), Dr Amy Milka (York), Sarah Goldsmith (York), Elodie Duche (Warwick) Organiser: Sarah Goldsmith, sarah.goldsmith@york.ac.uk Conference website: http://www.york.ac.uk/eighteenth-century-studies/events/re-thinkingthegrandtourconference/