Travel Course
The Art of Travel
K55.1200 2 CR to be arranged Steve Hutkins
Enrollment is restricted to students studying abroad at an NYU site during FALL 2008.
This online course provides an opportunity for students studying abroad to reflect, analytically and creatively, on their travel experiences. We examine some of the art created by travelers—travel literature, photography, paintings—and consider how traveling can itself be viewed as an art, with its own conventions, styles, traditions, and opportunities for innovation. The course looks at the history and sociology of travel, the political and economic dimensions of global tourism, and the representation of travel in the visual arts and literature. All of the course activities are conducted on the class website: students blog about their responses to the readings and their own travels, talk with each other in a chat room, post photos, etc. Enrollment is limited to students studying at one of NYU’s study abroad sites. Reading assignments are individualized for the city and country of each study-abroad site, but some readings are for the whole class: these may include selections from de Botton’s The Art of Travel, Urry’s The Tourist Gaze, MacCannell’s The Tourist, and Leed’s The Mind of the Traveler. For more information, see the course website: placeandliterature.com.