PWR 1IY: Rhetoric of Travel and Tourism
Mark Twain believed that “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.” Twain’s optimism about travel is easy to sympathize with. We may have felt it while taking a road trip, or when we traveled across the country, or even across the world, to come to Stanford. Even if you’ve never traveled outside the US, university study abroad programs hold out hope of mind-broadening opportunities. But there is also a dark side to travel. Instead of authentic, enlightening encounters with unfamiliar ways of life, tourism might allow superficial dalliances with other cultures, making them no more than exotic commodities to be consumed. “The traveler sees what he sees” wrote G.K. Chesterton, but “The tourist sees what he has come to see.”
In this class, we’ll think about the optimistic and the pessimistic arguments around travel and tourism. We’ll train ourselves to think critically about the rhetoric that travel programs use to describe an ideal of “getting away from it all,” encountering the world, and touching history, all while preserving one’s anonymity. We’ll read travel writing, consider cultural exchange programs, look at hotels and their histories, and consider how tourists are perceived in regions where tourism is a major industry. We’ll approach these subjects as rhetorical artifacts, with an eye to how they help us trace the preoccupation with the freedom, anonymity, temporary community, and coincidence of travel.
Major Assignments
Rhetorical Analysis
(1500-1800 words; 5-6 pages) You will analyze the rhetorical strategies that an author employs in a short piece of travel writing, a travel program uses to invite participants, or a hotel uses to attract travelers. For example, you might examine the Cardinal Hotel in downtown Palo Alto, in its décor, spatial arrangement, and brochures, and analyze how it presents itself as a historic landmark with relevance today, in contrast to, say, the Sheraton Hotel, which is part of a global chain.
Texts in Conversation
(1800-2400 words; 6-8 pages) This critical survey of scholarship on a research question you choose will be a foundation for your Research-Based Argument. By comparing texts from a variety of perspectives, you’ll develop your research agenda. Possible topics include the benefits and disadvantages of study abroad programs, the bioethics of adventure tourism, or how tourism affects historical sites. Or you might explore how the hotel works as a literal and metaphorical starting point of great journeys, and sometimes, as in Hitchcock’s Psycho, as the endpoint.
Research-Based Argument
(3600-4500 words; 12-15 pages) Here, you will craft an original argument in response to the research question you developed for the previous assignment. You will draw on a range of sources: books, articles, films, television shows, websites, and newspapers. You might consider how travel can be shaped by economic factors that make it a luxury rather than a right. You might write about how expensive “volunteer” programs abroad act as summer camps and résumé builders for college students, or study how extreme travel to dangerous and obscure zones has become a growth industry. This essay will be a chance to engage and contribute to the vast interdisciplinary conversation on travel, taking into account the ethnographic, economic, aesthetic, and historical dimensions that allow us to not only experience travel but also translate it into meaning.