CALL FOR PROPOSALS:

ISSUE EDITORS:

Unpacking Tourism
(Radical History Review No. 129Fall 2017)

Daniel Bender, University of Toronto

Steven Fabian, State University of New York at Fredonia
Jason Ruiz, University of Notre Dame
Daniel Walkowitz, New York University

This issue of the Radical History Review will explore radical approaches to the study of
tourism. As Hal Rothman has argued, tourism economies frequently represent a devils
bargain between tourists and those that he and others have called the toured upon. We want
to extend Rothmans understanding of tourism to ask questions that speak to broader forms of
human mobility, from those who tour as a leisure activity to the tourism as a colonial project.
How do people and communities resist the exploitative aspects of the touristic encounter? How
do the practices of tourism challenge or reinforce the realness of nation-states, ethnic groups,
and other imagined communities?
Tourism represents a critical way of producing knowledge about the Other, poverty, nature, and
culture, and it is the task of radical historians to interrogate the underlying systems of power that
shape that knowledge production. Tourism engages contested spaces and histories of those
spaces, variously engaged by tourists, both local and foreign, and local residents, but also by
curators and museum professionals, guides, and private and public agencies for which the project
is a business as well as local, regional and national politicians. This issue seeks essays that
engage these struggles and the diverse cultural, political, and economic sources contestants
mobilize. It also interrogates the relationship between the knowledge produced by tourism in
everyday life and of dominion such as empire.
This issue is interested in both the history of tourism and history in tourism. What kinds of
narratives about modernity, folklore, and development are produced through the tourist
encounters? How does tourism, as a global industry with its own capitalist and labor history,
relate to other forms of ethnographic leisure, such as museums? How do local actors decide
which historical narratives are privileged in the marketing of a place? How do tourists demands
for authenticity, accessible infrastructure (including railroads, hotels, police, etc.), and adventure
shape local and regional political economy? What modes of agency do the locals expressor
lackas they approach the touristic encounter?
We will bring together scholars from a variety of disciplinary and geographic locations to
provide alternative histories of the touristic encounter. We are especially interested in essays
that transcend national boundaries, asking big questions about tourism from a transnational
perspective. Topics might include (but are not limited to):
The origins of modern tourism
Tourism and empire
Ecotourism and touring nature
Culinary tourism
Guidebooks
Medical and plastic surgery tourism

The work/labor of tourism

Heritage tourism
Living history
Slumming
Sex tourism
Anti-tourism activism and other modes of resistance
Tourism and Nationalism
Space tourism

The RHR seeks scholarly, monographic research articles, but we also encourage such nontraditional contributions as photo essays, film and book review essays, interviews, brief
interventions, conversations between scholars and/or activists, and teaching notes and
annotated course syllabi for our Teaching Radical History section.
Procedures for submission of articles: By January 15, 2016, please submit a 1-2 page abstract
summarizing the article you wish as an attachment to contactrhr@gmail.com with Issue 129
Abstract Submission in the subject line. By March 1, 2016, authors will be notified whether
they should submit a full version of their article for peer review. The due date for full-length
article submissions will be July 1, 2016.
Please send any images as low-resolution digital files embedded in a Word or PDF document
along with the text. If chosen for publication, you will need to supply high-resolution image files
(jpg or TIFF files at a minimum of 300 dpi) and secure permission to reprint the images.
Those articles selected for publication after the peer review process will be included in issue 129
of the Radical History Review, scheduled to appear in October, 2017.
Abstract Deadline: January 15, 2016