Tourism Cars & Geography-Marketing America ((4 Credits))

Catalog description

The period between 1880 and 1940 is characterized by the escalation of national tourism. This occurrence was dependent upon the continual development of communication networks and transportation systems across the American landscape. It resulted in tourism emerging as a form of geographical consumption. Students will examine the growth of the tourist industry, which centered on the various sights and scenes of the American landscape, as well as the individuals, agencies, and corporations that advocated tourism as one’s patriotic duty, or as an individual’s right in relation to American citizenship. James Agee in Fortune noted that the automobile was “the opium of the American people,” and went on to describe the American roadside by 1934 as “incomparably the most hugely extensive market the human race has ever set up to tease and tempt and take money from the human race.”