Undergraduate - UnitATS2444 - Inscribing Italy: Travels and imaginings

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2014 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 1, 0.125 EFTSL

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered, or view unit timetables.

Level	Undergraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Arts
Monash Passport category	International Short Field Experience (Explore Program)
Offered	Prato Term 3 2014 (Day)
Coordinator(s)	Professor Robin Gerster

Notes

This is an international study program that requires an application to be enrolled - see the Arts Prato page for further information http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/prato/
Previously coded COM2150

Synopsis

The unit maps the roots and routes of English-language travel in Italy, from the aristocratic travel of the English Renaissance, to the Grand Tourists of the twentieth century, to the rise of middle-class tourism and the travel genre in the nineteenth century, to the mass tourism and cyber travel of today. In an eclectic range of sources, including travel books, essays and fiction, a central focus will be on contemporary or near-contemporary cultural responses to Italy (including those articulated in guidebooks), and also how the country is 'packaged' for the consumption of foreign travelers in the discourses of the tourism industry.

Outcomes

On successful completion of the unit students will have:

a clear understanding of the place of Italy in the imagination of English-language travelers
a critical sense of the historical development of cultural responses to Italy articulated in a range of texts
knowledge of the relationship between travel and ideology, especially in specific cultural (including gendered) contexts
an informed grasp of contemporary critical and theoretical approaches to the diverse discourses of travel and representation
a grasp of the changing practices of travel and tourism
critical perspectives on the processes of the production and reception of travel texts.