Tourism in the City of Angels: Past, Present, and Future
AMST 499: Special Topics
A Maymester Course Proposal
by Laura Pulido (AMST)
Course Overview
Tourism is not only the largest industry in Los Angeles today, but also one of the top growth industries globally. While tourism clearly has tremendous economic implications, it also plays a key role in shaping tourist destinations as well as larger social forces, such as race, gender, and economic inequality, that shape our world today. In this Maymester class, we will critically examine tourism in Los Angeles with a particular focus on how tourism intersects with social and economic inequality. In addition, we will use Los Angeles as a window into larger issues of global tourism.
The course will provide a mixture of class meetings, readings, and excursions to different types of tourist attractions that exemplify different forms of tourism. In the first part of the class, which will focus on conventional tourism, we will visit NBC’s Universal Studios, which is LA County’s leading tourist attraction, as well as Olvera Street, which is an excellent attempt to sanitize Los Angeles’s Mexican history and population. Despite the popularity of such destinations, conventional tourism has generated critiques from many quarters, including those concerned with its environmental impacts; the homogenization of peoples and places; the reproduction of social and economic inequality; and the passive nature of such experiences. This has led to an explosion of “alternative tourism,” which seeks to address, to varying degrees, such criticisms. Towards this end, we will go on an Esotouric Bus Adventure, which markets itself as offering a more “authentic” tourist experience. In addition, we will join a “Toxic Tour” of southeast Los Angeles hosted by Communities for a Better Environment. The Toxic Tour is considered to be a form of “radical” or oppositional tourism. In all cases we will investigate who benefits from the specific form of tourism in question, what kinds of values and power relations are implicit and explicit in its production; the environmental consequences of distinct tourist practices, and the implications for the city as a whole.
Course Requirements
In addition to regular course attendance and participation, students will be evaluated on three different types of assignments. It is expected that students will complete all reading assignments by the date listed in the syllabus.
1) Reaction Papers – 25%
Students will be required to write three reaction papers during the course of the Maymester that engages with the assigned readings. Each reaction paper should be 1-2 pages typed, double-spaced.
2) Analysis of Tourist Experience – 25%
Students are required to write one short-essay (5 pages) based on one of our fieldtrips that reflect detailed analysis of the values, representations, and power relations embedded in a particular tourist experience.
3) Producing an Alternative Tour – 40%
Each student will create an alternative tour based on some part of their life. The tour will include 5-6 sites; identify a clear target audience; explain why people would want to take such a tour; and articulate what kind of knowledge will be generated through the tour. The tour must have a descriptive name and be accompanied by a map showing the geography of the area in question and depict each site. Each location must include text (200 words) explaining its significance and the larger power dynamics you wish to highlight as well a photo(s).
4) Participation and Attendance - 10%
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course students should understand the breadth of tourism in Los Angeles, both historically and in the present. In addition, they will have a firm grasp of different types of tourism and the power relations associated with each.
Required Texts
Dydia DeLyser, Ramona Memories: Tourism and the Shaping of Southern California. University of Minnesota Press, 2005.
Laura Pulido, Laura Barraclough and Wendy Cheng, A People’s Guide to Los Angeles. University of California Press, 2012.
John Urry, The Tourist Gaze. London: Sage, 2002 (2nd edition).
Course Schedule
Note: all class meetings are 3 hours but the length of field trips vary.
May 19 – Course Introduction
What is tourism and why is it exploding?
Readings: John Urry, “Mass Tourism and the Rise and Fall of the Seaside Resort” and “The Changing Economics of the Tourist Industry” in The Tourist Gaze. London: Sage, pp. 16-37; 38-58.
May 20 – Tourism and the Historical Development of Los Angeles
Readings: Dydia DeLyser, Ramona Memories: Tourism and the Shaping of Southern California. University of Minnesota Press, 2005.
May 21 - Analyzing the Visual in LA Tourism: Place and Race
Where do tour guides direct tourists to and why?
In class content analysis of popular LA tourist guides: DK; National Geographic Traveller; Top 10; Fodor’s; Hometown Pasadena; LA Bizarro; Movie Star Homes; Wallpaper.
Readings: John Urry, “Working Under the Tourist Gaze” in The Tourist Gaze, London: Sage, 2002, pp. 59-73.
May 26 - Economic Impacts of LA Tourism
Where and how do the profits of LA tourism flow to?
Guest Speaker: Madeline Janis of Los Angeles Alternatives for a New Economy (LAANE) will discuss the Living Wage Ordinance for
LAX hotels.
Readings: Roy Weinstein and Kristina Stanford (2013) “2012 Economic Impact of Los Angeles County Visitor Spending” Microeconomics Report, 2013.
Emily Wallace, Kristina Pollack, Brandon Horth, Siobhan Carty, and Nathalie Elyas, “Los Angeles Tourism: A Domestic and International Analysis” Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, May 2014.
Study website of LA Tourism & Convention Board
http://www.discoverlosangeles.com/
May 27 - Universal Studios fieldtrip – (9:00 am – 6:00 pm)
We will take the Metro Red Line; bring note pad, pen and camera
for observations.
Readings: Laura Pulido, Laura Barraclough and Wendy Cheng, “Introduction” and “Chapter One” A People’s Guide to Los Angeles. University of California, 2012, pp. 1-71.
May 28 – Analysis of Universal Studios
June 2 - Olvera Street fieldtrip – (10:00 – 2:00 pm)
We will meet at Olvera Street. Bring note pad, pen and camera for observations.
Readings: Bill Deverell, “The Unending Mexican War” in Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of its Mexican Past, University of California Press, 2004, pp. 11-48.
Kropp, Phoebe. “Citizens of the Past? Olvera Street and the Construction of Race and Memory in 1930s Los Angeles” Radical History Review 81 (2001): 35-60.
June 3 - Tourism and Its Discontents
What are some of the primary critiques of conventional tourism?
Readings: Wearing, Stephen “Introduction” and “Alternative Tourism Experiences” in Volunteer Tourism: Experiences that Make a Difference. Oxford: CABI Publishing, 2001, pp. 1-37.
June 4 - The Rise of Alternative Tourism
Alternative Spring Break: Guest Speaker from USC’s Volunteer Center to discuss the rise of Alternative Spring Break
Readings:
http://sait.usc.edu/volunteer/get-involved/alternative-break- program.aspx
Carter, Perry, David Butler, and Derek Alderman, “The House that Story Built: The Place of Slavery in Plantation Museum Narratives” Professional Geographer 66 (4): 547-557.
Koleth, Maria, “Hope in the Dark: Geographies of Volunteer and Dark Tourism in Cambodia” Cultural Geographies 21 (4): 681-694.
June 6 - Esotouric Bus Adventure (10-2:00)
We will meet downtown. Bring note pad, pen and camera for observations.
Note: this is a SATURDAY!!!
Readings: Wearing, Stephen, “Volunteer Tourism Experiences” in Volunteer Tourism: Experiences that Make a Difference. Oxford: CABI Publishing, 2001, pp. 44-56.
June 9 - Community for Better Environment’s Toxic Tour (10:00 – 1:00pm)
We will carpool to CBE. Bring note pad, pen and camera for observations.
Readings: Phaedra Pezzullo, “Introduction” “Toxic Baggage” and “Sites and Sacralization” in Toxic Tourism: Rhetorics of Pollution, Travel, and Environmental Justice. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama, 2007, pp.1-23, 52-105.
June 10 – Draft presentations and class critique of final assignment
June 15 - Final Projects Due
Submit online to instructor
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