HIS 319/519 • MWF 1:30-2:35 p.m. • LB243 •
Spring 2008
B.A.
Furman University, M.A. University of Richmond, Ph.D. Tulane University
Contact
info: RT 1904 • (216) 687-3970 •
m.souther@csuohio.edu
Office
hours: Mon. & Fri. 9:15-10:30
a.m., or by appointment
Web: academic.csuohio.edu/souther_m
Tourism is one of the leading industries in the United States as well as an important leisure-time activity in which Americans engage the past and locate themselves in American society by viewing local and regional cultures that may differ from their own. The impulse to travel has built or reshaped cities and towns as well as regions.
This
course examines the role of tourism in American society and culture from the
early nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. It emphasizes how larger historical trends—the rise of
the middle class, transportation innovations, westward expansion, the emergence
of commercialized mass culture, industrialization, war and depression, to name
but a few—shaped tourist attractions and how tourism molded local,
regional, national, racial, and ethnic identities. We will examine Americans'
motives for choosing various destinations—retreat and spiritual uplift,
health and recreation, historical understanding, celebration and commemoration,
multicultural exoticism, and entertainment. We will also trace the development of numerous tourist
destinations, including seaside and mountain resorts, national parks, natural
springs, religious retreats, amusement parks and theme parks, battlefields,
living history museums, preserved or reinvented historic sites, gambling and
vice destinations, and urban entertainment districts.
In addition to reading response essays, a course project applies our understanding of how tours guide tourists on scripted paths in cities to developing historically grounded tour guides that interpret local history and the transformation of urban space in University Circle, one of Cleveland's leading tourist attractions. Students will receive training and field experience in visualizing the past through the critical examination of historical images, as well as conducting and analyzing oral histories. The course project—a partnership with University Circle Inc. and part of a larger collaboration between the Cleveland State University Department of History and Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, Cleveland Public Art, and ideastream (WCPN public radio and WVIZ public television) to create a new sense of place along the new Euclid Corridor—will yield oral histories and virtual tourist guidebooks combining images, sounds, and interpretive text that will ultimately shape University Circle signage and podcast tours as well as interactive history kiosks along the Euclid Corridor in the Circle.
Rothman,
Hal K. Devil's Bargains:
Tourism in the Twentieth-Century American West. Lawrence:
University Press of Kansas, 1998. Available from CSU Bookstore and online
booksellers.
Souther,
J. Mark. New Orleans on Parade:
Tourism and the Transformation of the Crescent City. Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,
2006. Available from CSU
Bookstore, online booksellers,
and Electronic Course Reserve (ECR).
Sterngass,
Jon. First Resorts: Pursuing
Pleasure at Saratoga Springs, Newport, and Coney Island.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2001. Out of print but available
from online booksellers and
on ECR.
Weeks,
Jim. Gettysburg: Memory,
Market, and an American Shrine.
Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2003. Available from CSU Bookstore and online booksellers.
Additional
reading selections available on ECR.
5
Reading Response Essays. 40%
At
five points in the semester you will write an essay in response to a reading or
set of readings. Four of these are
comparative essays in response to a set of readings by two authors who examine
similar topics, while the fifth is an essay that identifies themes, methods,
main arguments, and types of sources used to sustain those arguments in my book
New Orleans on Parade. Each essay
must be no less than 900 words (3 pages at 300 words/page), prepared in 12 pt.
Times New Roman font and double-spaced with 1" margins on all sides. The point of this activity is to build
your skill in identifying authors' most salient arguments and in drawing
conclusions from a comparison of their arguments and approaches. You will have an opportunity to replace
your lowest grade among the five essays by taking the final exam.
Response
Essay 1. 8%
After reading Sterngass, First Resorts, chapter 4, and Weeks, Gettysburg, chapter 1, prepare an
essay in which you consider two rather different motives for travel among the
elite and the emerging middle class: sublime nature and the social whirl. Specifically, you should comment on
what you think are the most important aspects of what travelers expected to do
in the 19th century and come to a conclusion about what these two
reading selections tell us about how travel practices reflected the character
of American society in that time.
Response Essay 2. 8%
After reading Rieser, "The Never-ending
Vacation," and Rothman, Devil's Bargains, chapter 5, prepare an essay in which
you discuss what Americans hoped to find in their travels to chautauquas,
archaeological sites, and dude ranches.
Who went to these places, and what motivated them to seek such
vacations? What did locals or
natives think about the influx of tourists? Do you see any conflicts between the ideal and the reality
of these places of leisure?
Response Essay 3. 8%
After reading Long, "Sex and Tourism in New
Orleans," and Register, "Life Is Only a Merry-Go-Round," prepare an essay in
which you discuss the role of novelty and respectability in tourism, using New
Orleans's Storyville and Coney Island's Luna Park as examples. Consider how proponents of these
attractions made them novelties.
Characterize the clientele that these destinations attracted. To what extent did these places afford
visitors a means for pleasurable escape while allowing them to maintain their "respectability?"
Response Essay 4. 8%
After reading Cocks, "The Noble Spectacle," and
Rast, "The Cultural Politics of Tourism in San Franncisco's Chinatown," prepare
an essay in which you consider how promoters peddled ethnic "others," as exotic
tourist spectacles. What was it
about late 19th and early 20th century U.S. society that
made visitors so receptive? How
did Chinese San Franciscans seek to control some of this trade, and how did their efforts affirm
tourists' perception of Chinese "otherness?" Finally, Cocks's chapter is from 2001, while Rast's article
is from 2007. In what way does
Rast build historiographically on Cocks's research?
Response Essay 5. 8%
After reading Souther, New Orleans on Parade, chapters 1, 2, 4, and
5, prepare an essay in which you comment on (a) how tourism reordered local
priorities after World War II, (b) any parallels you see between the concurrent
efforts to make the French Quarter, jazz, and Mardi Gras more accommodating to
tourists, and, (c) turning to the endnotes, the kinds of sources the author
uses most often to support his contentions in each chapter.
This
semester, we will research University Circle, one of Cleveland's leading
tourist destinations. In this
semester-long project, you will ultimately prepare an interpretive essay that
explores a theme relating to University Circle with an eye toward creating a
guided tourist experience of that theme in the form of a virtual tour guide
(via Powerpoint or, if you choose, iMovie). This is a cumulative project in the sense that by
mid-semester you will have created—through research, short essays, and
personally conducted oral histories—the "raw material" for your thematic
interpretive essay.
Landscape Description
Essay. 8%
Research
Collection. 8%
Topical Analysis
Essay. 8%
For this activity you will describe and analyze
the specific places and/or people you find most appropriate to tell a larger
story about University Circle in your thematic interpretation essay. You must identify and include at least
4 places and/or people in your analysis, and you should tie these together with
a brief explanatory introduction.
As part of this assignment, you will also create an appendix page with
timelines for each of your places/people to suggest the most important dates or
moments in the histories of each.
Your essay must be no less than 900 words (3 pages at 300 words/page),
exclusive of appendix and endnotes, prepared in 12 pt. Times New Roman font and
double-spaced with 1" margins on all sides.
You must sign up for, prepare for, and conduct
one 1-hour interview at University Circle Inc. on one of two designated days
(March 4 & 5). University
Circle Inc. has identified and will schedule dozens of individuals to be
interviewed. I cannot assure that
your interview will pertain directly to your chosen project theme, but I will
make everyone's oral histories available to you in electronic form. You will receive basic background
information on your interviewee, but it is your responsibility to develop a
pertinent list of questions, which I will review in advance of your interview. As part of this activity, you will,
after receiving a CD of your interview, listen to and prepare a
minute-by-minute topical log of the interview. In order to get full credit for
the interview, you must submit both questions and log in addition to doing the
interview.
Thematic
Interpretation Essay. 20%
From all of your previous research, essays, and
oral history sources, you will then prepare an original interpretive essay that
captures the essence of University Circle as a distinctive place in Cleveland. The essay must be no less than 3,000
words (10 pages at 300 words/page), exclusive of footnotes, prepared in 12 pt.
Times New Roman font and double-spaced with 1" margins on all sides. The essay must be rooted in your
research in the aforementioned sources and must identify and relate a series of
stories that reveal something significant about the history of University
Circle. Your focus will likely be
place-based, but you should also be careful to call attention to the human
actors in the stories you tell.
Your essay should be academically sound yet aimed at the savvy tourist
who wants to delve beneath the surface of the obvious. Per WAC requirements, you will submit a
first draft (in complete form) on which I will offer constructive criticism, and
you will resubmit a final draft thereafter. Each draft accounts for 10% of your final average.
Virtual
Tour Guide. 8%
Drawn from your research, your virtual tour
guide is a Powerpoint (or iMovie if you are knowledgeable) that visually
captures your theme in words, text, and sound. It must have at least 12 images and 3 sound clips, but
beyond that you have full artistic license. I will offer instruction in both using Powerpoint and
clipping oral histories using a free downloadable program called Audacity
(available for Windows and Mac).
You will present your virtual tour guide in an 8-10 minute presentation
to the class in week 15.
Comprehensive
Final Exam. (Optional)
The
final exam, which is optional, will cover the entirety of the semester's material
presented in class and in readings.
It will replace your lowest grade on reading response essays, unless
your exam grade is lower than your lowest response essay grade, in which case
the essay grade will stand. You
may also choose to take the exam in lieu of any one response essay. The exam will consist of short
identification terms (40%) and one essay (60%). You will have some choice in both sections.
HIS
519 (Graduate Students).
You will do
the same course project as the undergraduates, but your thematic interpretation
essay must be no less than 4,500 words (15 pages at 300 words/page). You will also do the landscape and
topical essays and the five reading response essays, all of which must be no
less than 1,200 words in length (4 pages at 300 words/page). Finally, you will choose any one
additional tourism history book in consultation with me, read it, prepare a
1,200-word review essay, and schedule a one-hour discussion meeting with me. Your final average will include 60% for
the course project, 30% for the 5 response essays (8% each) and 10% for the
additional review essay.
Documentation
of Research. In essay assignments, you must document
all sources from which you draw quoted passages or significant ideas by
inserting endnotes, which must be prepared in the Chicago Manual of Style format. For examples of Chicago Style citations, see
www.dianahacker.com/resdoc.
Assignment
Submissions. Any assigned work submitted after class
on the due date will incur a penalty of 10 percent after class on the due date,
with an additional 10 percent subtracted per subsequent day (including weekends
and holidays).
Extensions. In the event of extreme circumstances
that prevent your submitting assigned work on time, you may request an extension. If granted, a new due date will be
assigned. Extension requests must
be made no less than 48 hours (2 days) before the start of class on the due
date. After that, I require
written documentation that clearly demonstrates your inability to complete the
assignment on time.
Attendance. If you anticipate being unable to be in
class consistently, you should withdraw from the course. I will take account of absences and may
deduct 1/3 of a letter grade from your final average if you accumulate more than
three unexcused absences. Excused
absences require notice via email or phone prior to the start of class (pending
my approval) or appropriate written documentation thereafter (again, pending my
approval).
Student
Conduct. Unacceptable conduct includes but is
not limited to: disruptive talking or noisemaking, arriving late or leaving
early without appropriate notice, intimidating or threatening anyone in the
classroom, sleeping, bringing any activated personal electronic devices to the
classroom, doing other assignments during class, and "surfing" the Web.
Academic
Integrity. Using someone else's ideas or phrasing
and representing those ideas or phrasing as our own, either on purpose or
through carelessness, is a serious offense known as plagiarism. "Ideas or phrasing" includes written or
spoken material ranging from whole papers and paragraphs to sentences and
phrases. "Someone else" can mean a
professional source, such as a published writer or critic in a book, magazine,
encyclopedia, or journal; an electronic resource such as material we discover
on the Web; another student at CSU or elsewhere; and a paper-writing "service"
(online or otherwise) which offers to sell written papers for a fee. Source: Capitol Community College's
guide to plagiarism (based on the MLA style):
webster.commnet.edu/mla/plagiarism.shtml.
I will assign a grade of "0" on any
plagiarized work and reserve the right to notify the University according to
University procedures.
Writing
Assistance. The Department of History offers a
History Tutoring Center where you may seek assistance in preparing written
work. The Center is located in
Rhodes Tower, Room 1913, and may reached at (216) 687-3921.
Student
Disabilities. If you have a disability, it is your
responsibility to contact the Office of Student Disabilities, which will work
with you to develop a reasonable course of action that will enable you to
complete this course successfully.
You must then provide proper documentation to me if you are requesting
any special consideration of your disability.
Writing
Across the Curriculum (Applies only to HIS 319).
A
course approved for the WAC requirement must meet all of the following
criteria:
Additional
criteria
M
1/14 Course Introduction
W
1/16 American Tourism: A
Chronological and Thematic Overview
Weiss, "American Tourism
Before World War II" (ECR)
F
1/18 Possibilities
for Leisure Travel in 18th & Early 19th Century America
M 1/21 Martin Luther King Day (No Class)
W
1/23 Introduction to
University Circle Course Project
Guests:
Chris Bongorno and David Fitz, University Circle Inc.
University
Circle,
www.universitycircle.org
F 1/25 Discovering the American Landscape: New York & New England
Choose Project Theme
Sears, "'Doing' Niagara
Falls in the Nineteenth Century" (ECR)
M
1/28 Elite Springs and Spa
Resorts in the Early-Mid 19th Century
Sterngass,
First Resorts,
intro. + chap. 1
W
1/30 Introduction to CSU
Special Collections
F
2/1 Seaside
Resorts in the Early-Mid 19th Century
Sterngass, First
Resorts,
chap. 2
M
2/4 Sublime
Nature vs. Social Whirl: Attracting the Traveling Public in the 19th
Century
Landscape Description
Essay Due
Response Essay 1 Due
(Sterngass & Weeks)
Sterngass,
First Resorts,
chap. 4
Weeks, Gettysburg, chap. 1
W
2/6 Tourism
& the Civil War
Weeks, Gettysburg, chap. 2
F
2/8 Tourism
as Sectional Reconciliation, ca. 1865-1900
Silber, "Sick Yankees in
Paradise" (ECR)
M
2/11 Transcontinental Railroads
& the Transformation of Travel
Rothman, Devil's
Bargains,
chaps. 3-4
W
2/13 The West in the American
Imagination: The Birth of the National Parks
Hyde, "Visions of the
Far West" (ECR)
F
2/15 Indians
& Tourists in the Late 19th Century Southwest
Research Collection
Due
Dilworth, "Tourists and
Indians in Fred Harvey's Southwest" (ECR)
M 2/18 President's Day (No Class)
W
2/20 Transcendent Tourism:
Camp Meetings, Chautauquas, & Dude Ranches
Response Essay 2 Due (Rieser
& Rothman)
Rieser, "The
Never-ending Vacation" (ECR)
Rothman, Devil's
Bargains,
chap. 5
F
2/22 World's
Expositions, 1876-1915
The
World's Columbian Exposition, xroads.virginia.edu/~MA96/WCE/title.html
M
2/25 Oral History Training (&
Assignment of Interviewee)
Truesdell, "Oral History Techniques," www.indiana.edu/~cshm/oral_history_techniques.pdf
W
2/27 Staging Race at World's
Expositions
Nasaw, "The City as Playground" (ECR)
F
2/29 Nickel
Empires: Coney Island
Topical
Analysis Essay Due
Oral History
Questions Due
Sterngass, First
Resorts,
chap. 3
Nasaw, "The Summer Show"
(ECR)
M
3/3 From
Elite to Mass Tourism
Sterngass,
First Resorts,
chaps. 5-7
T
3/4 University
Circle Oral Histories
W
3/5 University
Circle Oral Histories
F
3/7 Tourism
& Morality in Progressive-Era America (Storyville & Luna Park)
Response Essay 3 Due
(Long & Register)
Long, "Sex and Tourism
in New Orleans, 1897-1917" (ECR)
Register, "Life Is Only
a Merry-Go-Round: Luna Park, 1903-13" (ECR)
3/8-3/16 Spring Break (No Classes)
M
3/17 The Rise of Urban
Tourism, 1870-1915
Cocks, "An Individuality
All Its Own" (ECR)
W
3/19 Seeing the City:
Guidebooks, Postcards, Maps, & Tourist Paths
Isenberg, "Fixing an
Image of Commercial Dignity" (ECR)
F
3/21 Slumming:
Ethnicity as Spectacle in San Francisco's Chinatown
Response
Essay 4 Due (Cocks & Rast)
Cocks, "The Noble
Spectacle" (ECR)
Rast, "Cultural Politics
of Tourism in San Francisco's Chinatown" (ECR)
M
3/24 Tin-Can Tourists &
Tourist Traps in the Interwar Period
Belasco, "Itinerary," "Gypsying," & "Cars vs. Trains" (ECR)
Rothman, Devil's
Bargains,
chap. 6
W
3/26 See America First:
Tourism & National Identity in the Interwar Period
Shaffer, "Seeing America
First" (ECR)
F
3/28 Powerpoint/Audacity
Training
M
3/31 Race, Public Space, &
Tourism in the Interwar Period
Simon, "Staging Utopia
on the Boardwalk" and "The Midway" (ECR)
W
4/2 Heritage
Towns: Santa Fe, Williamsburg, & New Glarus
F
4/4 Patriotic
Shrine: Gettysburg and Mass Tourism
Weeks, Gettysburg, chaps. 5-6
M
4/7 Tourism
& Urban Cultural Preservation: New Orleans' French Quarter
Response
Essay 5 Due (Souther, chaps. 1-2, 4-5)
Souther,
New Orleans on Parade, chaps. 1-2
W
4/9 Tourism
& Urban Cultural Expression: New Orleans Jazz & Mardi Gras
Souther,
New Orleans on Parade, chaps. 4-5
F
4/11 The
Postwar-American Mass Resort: Las Vegas as Archetype
Rothman, Devil's
Bargains,
chaps. 11-12
M
4/14 The Postwar-American
Theme Park: Disneyland as Archetype
Thematic
Interpretation Essay First Draft Due
W
4/16 Tourism, Race, and Urban
Image: Civil Rights–Era New Orleans
Souther, New Orleans
on Parade,
chap. 3
F
4/18 The
Rise of the Entertainment City since the 1970s
Souther, New Orleans
on Parade,
chaps. 6-7
Week 14
M
4/21 Heritage Seekers:
Reliving the Past in Modern-day Gettysburg & Williamsburg
Weeks,
Gettysburg,
chaps. 7-8 + epilogue
Rothstein, "An Upgrade for Ye Olde History Park" (ECR)
W
4/23 Toward Inclusive Cultural
Tourism: Plantation Tours & Black History
Eichstedt & Small, "Trivializing and Deflecting the Experience of Enslavement" (ECR)
Southern
plantation tourist brochures (ECR)
Quick, "Plantation slavery exhibits hope to attract more tourists" (ECR)
F
4/25 Tourism & the Fate
of Cities: Las Vegas, Atlantic City, & New Orleans
Simon, "Casino Publics"
(ECR)
Souther, "The Disneyfication of New Orleans" (ECR)
M
4/28 Presentations
W
4/30 Presentations
F
5/2 Presentations
– Virtual Tour Guide Due
W
5/7 Final
Exam, 1-3 p.m. (Replaces
Lowest Response Essay Grade)
Thematic
Interpretation Essay Final Draft Due
Belasco,
Warren. Americans on the Road:
From Autocamp to Motel, 1910-1945.
Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press, 1979.
Cocks,
Catherine. Doing the Town: The
Rise of Urban Tourism in the United States, 1850-1915.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
Dilworth,
Leah. "Tourists and Indians in
Fred Harvey's Southwest." Seeing
and Being Seen: Tourism in
the American West. Edited by David M. Wrobel and Patrick L. Long. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas,
for the Center of the American West, University of Colorado at
Boulder, 2001. 142-164.
Eichstedt,
Jennifer L., and Stephen Small. Representations
of Slavery: Race and Ideology in Southern
Plantation Museums. Washington: Smithsonian Institution
Press, 2002.
Hyde,
Anne Farrar Hyde. An American
Vision: Far Western Landscape and National Culture, 1820-
1920.
New York: New York University Press, 1990.
Long,
Alecia. "'A Notorious Attraction':
Sex and Tourism in New Orleans, 1897-1917." Southern
Journeys: Tourism, History, and Culture in the Modern South. Edited by Richard D. Starnes.
Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama
Press, 2003. 15-41.
Nasaw,
David. Going Out: The Rise and
Fall of Public Amusements. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1999.
Quick,
Dennis. "Plantations' Slavery
Exhibits Hope to Attract More Tourists."
Charleston Regional
Business Journal, May 28, 2007.
Rast,
Raymond W. "The Cultural Politics
of Tourism in San Francisco's Chinatown, 1882-1917." Pacific
Historical Review, 76:1 (February 2007):
29-60.
Register,
Woody. The Kid of Coney Island:
Fred Thompson and the Rise of American Amusements. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Rieser,
Andrew C. The Chautauqua
Moment: Protestants, Progressives, and the Culture of Modern
Liberalism.
New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.
Rothstein,
Edward. "An Upgrade for Ye Olde
History Park." New York Times, April 6, 2007.
Sears, John F. Sacred Places:
American Tourist Attractions in the Nineteenth Century. Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press, 1998.
Shaffer,
Marguerite S. "Seeing America
First: The Search for Identity in the Tourist Landscape." Seeing
and Being Seen: Tourism in the American West. Edited by David M. Wrobel and Patrick L. Long.
Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, for the Center of the American West, University of Colorado at
Boulder, 2001. 165-178.
Silber,
Nina. The Romance of Reunion:
Northerners and the South, 1865-1900.
Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1993.
Simon,
Bryant. Boardwalk of Dreams:
Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America.
New York: Oxford
University Press, 2005.
Souther,
J. Mark. "The Disneyfication of
New Orleans: The French Quarter as Facade in a Divided
City."
Journal of American History, 94:3 (December 2007): 804-811.
Weiss,
Thomas. "Tourism in America Before
World War II." Journal of
Economic History,
64:2 (June
2004): 289-327.
[1] The word count may only include one preliminary draft
for each final draft.
[2] Exceptions to this criterion may be granted in
disciplines or courses where students do a substantial amount of writing, but the
course structure and/or content does not create opportunities for an assignment
of this length.
[3] Writing-to-learn helps students use writing to explore
many aspects of the course as well as their own reflections; these activities
should foster learning at deeper levels than memorization or recitation. Writing-to-communicate emphasizes
aspects of writing (style, grammatical correctness, coherence, focus) that
allow a reader to navigate the writing as he or she wishes.