The crumbling Hotel Splendid of Marie Redonnet. The room where Lisa Robertson’s Hazel Brown awakens. The autofictional reflections of Joanna Walsh’s experience as a hotel reviewer. And of course, the multilinear, hybrid Hotel Theory of Wayne Koestenbaum.

But also - the hotels where Sophie Calle snoops. Joanna Hogg’s grand, unsettling hotel where The Eternal Daughter lingers. The lonely quarters painted by Edward Hopper. The misanthropic atmosphere of Fawlty Towers. Robert Smithson’s lecture on the surreal Hotel Palenque. The white fantasies of the White Lotus. The bloody trail in Norman Bates’ motel.

Hotels are, quite literally, everywhere. 

Business hotels, love hotels, spa hotels, chain hotels, capsule hotels, the-only-one-around hotels, mass-tourism hotels, so-close-to-the-sea-it-should-be-illegal hotels. Associated with both the leisure class in the 19th century (e.g. in Proust), and the 20th century social-democratic utopia of paid holidays, the hotel promises to be a home away from home, while, simultaneously, clearly distinguishing itself from whatever it is that you call home.

We are looking for papers that explore the hotels’ vast range: from their romantic promises to the impossible-to-ignore ecological and social issues of mass-tourism in the 21th century, focusing not only on the tourists, but also those whose livelihoods depend on catering to them, and cleaning after them.

We invite researchers, architects, artists, writers and other practitioners to send us creative-critical scholarly work that can push both form and content. How can an academic text be a provisional lodging? A whole set of rooms? A multi-perspective encounter?