123251 AR Literature Course - 1/2 (MA) British/Irish/New English & Cultural Studies (2024W)

Tourism is a global phenomenon. We go on holidays ourselves, or we live in places that other people visit, for example on their European tour with a stop in romantic Vienna. A negative image of the tourist stresses their craving for stereotyped experiences, easy entertainment and comfortable hotels that come up to the standards of their home country. Tourists go to Thailand, Nigeria or Australia but are happy to eat schnitzel there.
On the other hand, tourism can be seen as positive as tourists are interested in local customs and traditions, may meet local residents, learn languages and eat local food. However, both evaluations of the tourist and tourism show the binary opposition that lies at the heart of representations of tourism and travel: authenticity vs. inauthenticity, or original vs. copy. Essentialist hierarchies of self vs. other and known vs. foreign are always implied in these oppositions, no matter the evaluation.

The seminar will question these seemingly obvious oppositions and the hierarchy of the good and the bad tourist, or the tourist and the traveler in literary texts from the early 20th to the 21st century. Here, we will focus on the following questions:

1. What are the categories, differentiations and theories that have been proposed in cultural studies, semiotics or sociology in order to describe the tourist and tourism?
2. What is the function of tourist experiences for the tourist self, i.e. where do categories of otherness, exoticism and the foreigner come into descriptions of tourism and tourists?
3. How do literary texts from the early 20th to the 21st century represent and evaluate tourists and tourism?
4. What forms of tourism are covered in the literary texts (from the Grand Tour to the British female sex tourist in the Caribbean)?
5. What happens to our notions of home, nostalgia and identity when viewed in the light of tourist experience?

Therefore, we will use the literary texts and theoretical approaches in order to answer the question whether it makes sense to talk about ‘authentic’ or ‘inauthentic’ experiences in the first place.

We will use panel discussions, input presentations, creative work (including your portfolio tasks) and work in groups to reach our goals.

The course will be project-based: after an input phase, students will be expected to develop their own research questions and develop, present and discuss their creative projects and writing tasks in the course of the semester.

At the end of the class, students will have gained an awareness of the critical debate surrounding tourism and its literary representation (including the variety and use of genres and narrative features), will be able to define and use relevant theoretical positions reflecting the debate in the field and will be able to create and upload the tasks and creative work designed for the class.