Fulfills: Form & Theory

This course considers critical discourses surrounding intertwined
notions of tourism, authenticity, and nostalgia. We will begin by
exploring tourism from cultural, symbolic, and social perspectives,
paying particular attention to the tourist gaze and the relationship
of the visitor to the people/culture being visited. We will then
examine notions of authenticity, interrogating what it means when we
invoke words such as “authentic,” “original,” “heritage,”
and “traditional.” How and why do cultures present an “authentic”
self to a visiting other? Finally, we will also explore the way such
notions are commodified and configured. What is nostalgia? How is it
produced and in turn, how does it drive cultural production?
Throughout the course we will explore the ways in which folklorists
and anthropologists have written about these issues, and keep in
mind the parallels between the tourist experience and the work of
the ethnographer.