In this last session, we will turn our attention to a form of consumption that became increasingly important and conspicuous in the modern world – tourism. We will begin by considering the importance of studying tourism as a historical phenomenon, including its precursors and connection to labour and social history. We will examine some of the key concepts for studying tourism, such as the idea of a 'tourist gaze' and the evolution of the 'destination image', before zooming in on the history of domestic tourism in the Americas. In this context, we will analyse the role of domestic tourism as a form of what Marguerite S. Shaffer has termed 'virtuous consumption' which allows individuals to participate economically and culturally in the nation-building project.

Before the session, please identify a place that you have visited for leisure. It could be somewhere you went for a day trip, or part of a longer itinerary. Consider: Why did you go there? If someone else made the choice, what do you think motivated them?

Seminar Questions

1. What is tourism and (why) does it matter to historians?
2. How might we define tourism as a uniquely modern form of consumption?
3. How did domestic tourism allow spaces to be reimagined in the US and Chile?

Required Reading

Booth, Rodrigo. ‘The Making of an Elite Tourist Enclave: Viña Del Mar’s Miramar Beach, Chile (1872–1910)’. In The Business of Leisure: Tourism History in Latin America and the Caribbean, edited by Andrew Grant Wood, 119–46. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2021.

Shaffer, Marguerite S. See America First: Tourism and National Identity, 1880-1940. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2001. Please read Chapter 1: ‘The Continent Spanned’ (pp. 7-39)

Urry, John, and Jonas Larsen. The Tourist Gaze 3.0. 3rd ed. London: Sage, 2011. Please read Chapter 1: 'Theories' (pp. 1-30)

Supplementary Reading

Babb, Florence. The Tourism Encounter: Fashioning Latin American Nations and Histories. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010.

Cocks, Catherine. Tropical Whites: The Rise of the Tourist South in the Americas. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/22005.

Desmond, Jane C. Staging Tourism: Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Gyr, Ueli, ‘The History of Tourism: Structures on the Path to Modernity’. Translated by Christopher Gilley. European History Online (EGO), 3 December 2010. http://www.ieg-ego.eu/gyru-2010-en.

MacCannell, Dean. The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

MacCannell, Dean. The Ethics of Sightseeing. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.

Merrill, Dennis, Negotiating Paradise: U.S. Tourism and Empire in Twentieth-Century Latin America (Chapel Hill, NC, 2009)

Wood, Andrew Grant, ed. The Business of Leisure: Tourism History in Latin America and the Caribbean. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2021.

Young, Phoebe S. K. Camping Grounds: Public Nature in American Life from the Civil War to the Occupy Movement. Oxford University Press, 2021.