HI6050 - From Grand Tours to Dirty Weekends: Travellers and Tourists in Britain, Ireland and Beyond

You will learn through a combination of lectures and seminars. The lectures will introduce the broader chronological developments in the history of travel writing and tourism, and the central themes and concepts. You will learn about the different approaches to the study of travel writing and tourism, both within the discipline of history and in literary studies, heritage studies, and historical geography. We will apply the concept of performance to understand travel as a form of self-fashioning and to understand interactions between ‘hosts’ and ‘guests’. We will consider insights from literary studies when we analyse the development of travel writing as a diverse genre, from personal travel narratives to the proliferation of guidebooks such as Murray’s and Baedeker’s.

You will prepare for the seminars by completing essential and recommended reading. The seminars are driven by primary source analysis, and you will be working with real historical evidence throughout the module. These sources will vary from week to week, and include extracts from travel writing, poster artwork, illustrations, films, and photographs. Learning materials, tasks, and readings will be available on Blackboard. You will receive formative feedback throughout the learning process, and the summative assessment will match your learning against the learning outcomes for the module.

On this module you will be supported throughout by your module tutor, the programme leader, and through engagement with your peers. The module tutor will be available on a weekly basis during scheduled feedback and consultation hours, and also by email. In the classroom, your peers will contribute to a collaborative learning environment, and you will be guided through the requirements and expectations of the module by the programme leader. Formative feedback will be provided during the weekly seminars and assessment tasks.

All modules at Northumbria include a range of reading materials that students are expected to engage with. Online reading lists (provided after enrolment) give you access to your reading material for your modules. The Library works in partnership with your module tutors to ensure you have access to the material that you need.

Knowledge & Understanding:
1. Knowledge and understanding of how travel writing and tourism shaped modern Britain and Ireland; awareness of important historiographical developments; knowledge of the historical sources that help us understand the history of travel and tourism.
2. A critical understanding of conceptual and theoretical categories that relate to these themes.

Intellectual / Professional skills & abilities:
3. Demonstrate a range of transferable skills, including the ability to make independent critical judgements, to critically evaluate sources, to summarise the research of others, to present arguments in a cogent and persuasive way, and to understand contemporary debates around tourism in their historical context.

Personal Values Attributes (Global / Cultural awareness, Ethics, Curiosity) (PVA):
4. Engagement with ethical questions around tourism and economic relations, including topics relating to empire and postcolonialism. Consideration of ethical questions around travel writing and the description of peoples and places, including topics relating to race, gender and class.

2 x 3,000-word essays

The essays will provide an opportunity for the students to demonstrate their understanding of travel writing and tourism in modern British and Irish history, using a range of secondary and primary material, and showing skills in reading, analysis, source interpretation, criticism, and citation. These essays will be written in response to questions chosen from two thematic lists provided by the module tutor.

Formative assessment will be based around short student presentations in class.

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In this module you will discover how travel and tourism shaped politics, culture, and identity in modern Britain and Ireland. Along the way, you will discover how modern safari tourism is connected to the spread of the British Empire in Africa, and you will find out about mountaineers such as Gertrude Bell, who defied traditional gendered expectations in the Swiss Alps. In the twentieth century, you will see how tourism became an area of cooperation in a politically divided Ireland. You will consider how Black British travellers have experienced city space and the countryside in different ways to their white counterparts, and the photography of Ingrid Pollard will prompt you to consider the relationship between race and national identity in Britain today. We will explore all of this by examining travel writing, posters, illustrations, photographs, and films.