From medieval pilgrimage to Asian sex tours:A critical history of Western tourism.

A Summer Session 1998, CCLS 125 class

What is tourism?What is a tourist?Why do particular people take particular vacations in particular periods of history?What are the functions and effects of this tourist activity within the societies of both host and guest?How do tourism and representations of tourism influence relations between nations, races, classes, and genders (and vice versa)?How does tourism fit into narratives of colonialism, imperialism and postmodernism?What sorts of conceptual and methodological approaches might help to answer these questions?This ‘Critical concepts in Western culture’ class will guide the students through an exploration of these questions with the goals of providing an overview of the meanings of the development of tourism in the ‘West’ and of encouraging students towards a more critical awareness of their own activities as tourists both at home and abroad.Like many CCLS 125 / CPLT 200 courses, this course is of broad scope and will necessarily operate through anecdote, using particular narratives as suggestive of general trends as one concept or trope is traced through a variety of historical periods and cultural locations. 

After a brief introduction and some preliminary working definitions, the course will proceed both historically and regionally.Four general periods will be covered: ancient and medieval, colonial, imperial, and contemporary/postmodern.In the study of each period, the students will read (or view) travel narratives written by Western (and at least one or two non-Western) tourists (or hosts), historical background materials, and a sampling of academic studies of these particular tourist practices from a variety of disciplines (historical, sociological, anthropological, economic, cultural studies).Students will write a brief essay applying the conceptual approaches provided to each travel narrative.Class lecture and discussion will explore the possibilities and limits for each particular approach to each narrative and will attempt develop an understanding of tourism and the approaches to it as discursive constructs with their own histories, politics, and real effects.Students will finish the course with a slightly longer study in which they apply the approaches they find most useful in a study of their own activities as tourists.The course will include a field trip / field work in Nogales.

Tourism Course:Sources for Readings / Viewings.

Ascher, F. (1985).Tourism:Transnational corporations and cultural identities.

Butler, R. & T. Hinch. (1996) Tourism and indigenous peoples.

Cambell, M.B. (1988). The witness and the other world:Exotic European travel writing, 400-1600.

Cannibal Tours.The movie.

Chaucer, G.The Canterbury Tales.

Dana, R. H. (1840/1936).Two years before the mast.

De Kadt. (1979).Tourism – Passport to development?

Feifer, M. (1986).Going places:Tourism in history:From imperial Rome to the Present.

Kincaid, J. (1988).A small place.

Harrison, D. (ed.), (1992).Toursim and the less developed countries.

Heath & Wall, (1992).Marketing tourism desitinations.

Lawrence, D. H. (1926/1959).The Plumed Serpent.

Lea, J. (1988).Tourism and development in the third world.

MacCannell, D. (1989).The tourist:A new theory of the leisure class.

MacCannell, D. (1992).Empty meeting grounds.

Malinowski, B. (1922).Argonauts of the Western Pacific.

McClure, J. (1992).Late Imperial Romance.

McIntosh, R. (1972).Tourism:Principles, practices and philosophies.

Murphy, P. (1985).Tourism:A community approach.

Nash, D. (1996).Anthropology of tourism.

Obeyesekere, G. (1992).The apotheosis of captain Cook:European mythmaking in the Pacific.

Porter, D. (1991). Haunted journeys:Desire and trangression in European travel writing.

Pratt, M.L. (1992).Imperial eyes:Travel writing and transculturation.

Reddy, AC & DP Campbell.Marketing's role in economic development.

Sinclair & Stabler, (1991).The tourism industry:An international analysis.

Smith, V. (1989).Hosts and guests.

Smith, V. & W. Eadington.(1992).Tourism Alternatives.

Spurr, D. (1993).The rhetoric of empire:Colonial discourse in journalism, travel writing, and imperial administration.

Todorov, T. (1984).The conquest of America:The question of the Other.

Torgovnick, M. (1990).Gone primitive:Savage intellects, modern lives.

Turner, V. (1979).Process and pilgrimage:Essays in comparative symbology.

Twain, M.The innocents abroad.

Twain, M.Roughing it.

Urry, J. (1990).The tourist gaze.

Van Den Berghe, P. (1994).The quest for the other:Ethnic tourism.

Whelan, T. (1991).Nature tourism.

Walker, R. Infernal paradise:Mexico and the modern English novel.

And promotional materials for a variety of tourism destinations / products, contemporary popular accounts of travel, and other materials brought in by the students in the last section of the course.