In this book Janet Wolff examines the ways in which travel is used as a metaphor in cultural theory, and the use of dance (another form of mobility) as an image of liberation, particularly in relation to women. The topic of marginality is addressed - Walter Benjamin's marginality to the academy, the marginality of Gwen John and Rainer Maria Rilke in Paris in the 1900s - and the more general question of whether exile or distance provides a better vantage-point for cultural criticism than centrality and stability. Wolff seeks to break down the boundaries between academic and personal writing. The question of memoir and cultural theory is addressed with regard to Walter Benjamin, and several of the essays explore the particular meeting point of memory, personal experience, and cultural/sociological analysis. With linked themes of exile, memoir and movement, the book had a wide range of focus: opera, rock'n'roll, a Schubert quartet, feminist literary criticism, Gwen John's interiors, and Victorian lady travellers.

One afternoon in December 1992, Yuri Lotman sat down to dictate to his assistant. These sessions were spread out over that winter and into the spring of 1993—the final spring of Lotman's life. The result is this book of memories and recollections. Five sections concern a single anecdote or theme—lice on the front, an encounter with a hare, a "totally Bulgakovian" episode, a visit from the KGB, Tartu School politics. The remaining two sections supply the narrative backbone of the memoir, focusing on the passage of time: school and frontline life, the end of the war, and postwar university life. --