H42.1041 Lec 4 Credits
Instructor(s): Pegi Vail
Wednesdays 3:30 – 6:15 pm, 4 points
721 Broadway, 611
Pegi Vail, peg.vail@nyu.edu
A booming multinational industry, tourism is a powerful medium of transnational encounter. There is hardly a place on
earth not part of the recreational geography of tourism. This course will undertake a performance analysis of tourist
productions, especially early and contemporary travelogues. The political economy and cultural impact of tourism will be
explored through an ethnographic examination of actual sites, incorporating segments of the tourism industry ranging
from backpackers to luxury travelers. An exemplary case of cultural invention and commodification, tourism is implicated
in the histories of pilgrimage, travel, colonialism, and ethnography, retracing their itineraries and replicating their
discourse. Particular emphasis will thus be placed on travel stories, from word-of-mouth tales to those circulating in print
and media, and their role in shaping experience and destination perspectives.
Pegi Vail is an anthropologist, filmmaker, and curator. Her current academic work focuses on the political economy of tourism
in the developing world, exploring the role travel stories in print and media have in shaping experience and destination
perspectives. This subject is featured in Right of Passage, her book on backpackers in Bolivia (forthcoming, Duke University
Press). Gringo Trails, Vail's documentary-in-progress shot in West Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America, also addresses
backpacker tourism. Her award-winning short documentary, The Dodger’s Sym-phony, was broadcast on PBS/WNET and has
screened in New York and national museums, international festivals, and on Northwest Airlines. She has curated and cocurated
film exhibitions, including First Nations/First Features: A World Showcase of Indigenous Film & Media at
MoMA/Museum of Modern Art (firstnationsfirstfeatures.org). Vail was on the founding board of Stories at the Moth
(themoth.org), a popular national storytelling collective she has also curated events with
