Immersion Diversity: Teaching Tourism, Travel Writing, and Race from the Inside Out
Exploring Race in Predominantly White Classroom: Scholars of Color Reflect. Eds. George Yancy and Maria del Guadalupe Davidson. Series: Critical Social Thought. Routledge:New York, 2014. pps. 173-180.
Posted: 2 Nov 2014
Date Written: July 1, 2014
Abstract
In today’s media landscape, new media discourses help define the travel experience for emerging generations. From newspaper features, to niche magazines, to dedicated cable channels, the proliferation of travel media reflects a hard-to-satiate desire to leave home and parachute in along the fringes of other neighborhoods. Within these parameters, it is a challenging enterprise to invite students to explore race as a component of their and others’ experiences. Writing race, then, as a form of travel limits us to the roads we may have already traveled. This chapter discusses an approach to teaching race through travel. Specifically, through a class I created in travel writing, I invite students to grapple with ideas about race and identity as part of their acquisition of career-oriented, professional skills in media and mass communication. But it is in the pursuit of those skills — including the need to interview strangers and accurately represent their ideas — that the notion of what it means to be “raced” becomes powerfully salient.
Keywords: tourism, diversity, race, rhetoric of travel, writing
JEL Classification: F10, Z1
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation