Identity

Identity

Research Projects & Grants

Tourism is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that is also the world's largest industry. It reaches annual revenues of approximately US$3 trillion (see the United Nations World Tourism Organization at http:www.unwto.org/index.php). In 2010, International tourist arrivals had grown 7% from the previous year to reach $940 million. It is therefore no surprise that transnational corporations based in the West or the Global North (including companies like Pepsico, Marriott, McDonald's, and Disney) manage much of the industry, promoting particular places and sights and providing tours, travel arrangements, accommodation, food, entertainment, the manufacturing and selling of souvenirs, and ultimately attempting to craft the meaning of these experiences for individuals, families and communities. They do so alongside other socio-economic and political actors, such as nation-states from the Global North and from the Global South. All collide for, or sometimes enter in confrontation about, the meaning of the past, of history, of “heritage.”

In an age of globalization where "culture" itself is increasingly a traveling commodity, the Working Group for the Study of Identity/Identification/Identities will focus on the question of tourism/travel and meet to share research results and reflect upon a number of questions: What is tourism? In what ways might the ethnographic (and other kinds of) study of tourism shed light on formations of culture and identity in a postmodern world? How has tourism reproduced unequal relations of power and access to resources? Specifically, what have been the consequences of tourism for host communities, especially the identity struggles of (post)colonial societies? What are the experiences of tourists, performers and others who daily enact rituals of encounter in today’s expanding circuits of travel?

Tourism and travel are not new phenomena. This group will explore a number of different tourism formations, from roots/heritage tourism, academic tourism and sex tourism, to the development of tourism in colonized lands in the early 20th century. It will also attempt to answer such questions as: how the experience and category of travel have changed over time and across space among differing historical actors and global societies. What, for example, is the meaning of tourism within the confined space of a communist state? What about within a liberal democracy? What role too has the space of domestic life and “home” played in experiences of travel? Can one “travel” in one’s imagination and how do we understand this type of “tourism” or “voyeurism”?

Our Working Group is multi- and inter-disciplinary and reaches beyond SIPA and CAS Departments to include the School of Architecture and the Arts, the School of Hospitality Management and the Wolfsonian Museum, whose collections highlight the changing meanings of travel over time.

Affiliated Faculty

  • Rebecca Friedman, PhD – Department of History Director of European Studies and the Miami-Florida European Union Center of Excellence
    The focus of her research is on the history of masculinity and the idea of masculinity as an identifying feature among Russian men during the 19th century. Specifically, she examines behavior, loyalty and sociability among Russian university students that would eventually reshape the Russian social and political landscape in decades that followed. She is particularly interested in exploring the models of manhood these young men encountered and created during their three to four years of university study. Her current research moves beyond gender to include an exploration of the ways in which Russians imagined their homes and their domestic life in the years preceding the Bolshevik Revolution. One aspect of this project includes an examination of representations of domestic interiors and childhoods.
  • Maria Logrono, PhD – Department of History
    Her main area of interest is modern Middle Eastern history, with an emphasis on the history of Arab migrant communities in Latin America. Her research explores the transnational connections of these communities with their homelands in the oriental Middle East (Mashreq). She has co-directed two research and dissemination projects funded by the Social Science Research Council on the presence of Muslim communities in Latin America. Some of the findings and activities associated with this project can be found at www.islamamericas.com
  • Oren B. Stier, PhD – Department of Religious Studies / Director of Judaic Studies
    His main area of interest is Jewish Cultural Studies, with a special emphasis on the contemporary period and all aspects of present-day Jewish life, thought, and identity. The focus of his research primarily deals with historical and memorial contexts of several fundamental images associated with the Holocaust and the way it is associated with Jewish identity. Other ongoing research interests include Hasidism and Judaism in South Africa.
  • Jonathan Mogul, PhD – The Wolfsonian-FIU Museum
    His interests address the role of visual and material culture in constructing and expressing collective identities, such as nationality, gender and political ideologies. He has co-curated numerous exhibitions for the Wolfsonian on topics ranging from food and American culture, gender and labor, mid-century Havana and the Great Depression era in the United States.
  • Vrushali Patil, PhD – Department of Global Sociocultural Studies and Women Studies Center
    Her research interest is in exploring how people in the Global South negotiate collective identities in the context of global/transnational power relations—from the perspective of transnational feminism. Associated with her main research interest, she is also interested in theorizing modern categories of collective identity, particularly ‘gender,’ ‘race,’ ‘nation,’ and ‘culture,’ in historical and transnational perspective.
  • David Rifkind, PhD – School of Architecture
    His research focuses on how architecture forms and represents colonial and Italian fascist identity. He has examined architectural history and theory as it reflects individual identity associated with modernistic perceptions and ideals in fascist Italian architecture
  • Ferial Boutaghou, PhD – Department of Modern Languages and Women Studies Center
    Completed her dissertation in Comparative Literature at the University of Limoges (France, 2006) exploring the link between the emergence of the historical novel and the construction of national and cultural identity in four major colonized areas (Australia, Bengal, Egypt, Mexico) at the end of 19th century. She is currently preparing the manuscript of a book, Occidentalismes. Romans historiques post/coloniaux et identités nationales, under contract with the publisher Honoré Champion (Paris).
  • Nancy Del Risco, PhD - School of Hospitality and Tourism Management
    The majority of her research has concentrated on international tourism marketing. Specifically, she specializes in tourism development, sustainability, and management. She has completed work and consulting work involving environmental management associated with the tourism industry.
  • Jean Muteba Rahier, PhD – Department of Global & Sociocultural Studies and African & African Diaspora Studies (AADS) / Director of AADS
    Has conducted extensive research on Afro-Ecuadorian populations that touch upon identities and identification processes in a various contexts (beauty contests, festivity performances, football or soccer, media representations, sexuality constructions, social movements, etc.). Another research orientation has him focus on the intersection of sex, race, and power in European colonial contexts in Central Africa. He has also engaged in the past few years in research on roots/heritage tourism and academic tourism in the Senegambian region in West Africa.

Events

Spring semester 2012 and academic year 2012-2013:

  • A public seminar with David Picard, PhD, Professor at the Universidade Nova in Lisbon, Portugal around his recently published book Tourism, Magic and Modernity: Cultivating the Human Garden (2011). Dr. Picard will make a 40-minute presentation related to the content of his book and two members of the Working Group will engage with his work in 10-15 minute presentations each. Dr. Picard will respond before the floor is open to questions from the audience.
  • Two faculty will present their tourism focused work in the SIPA Inter-Regional Initiative conference planned for March 2012.
  • The Working Group will organize a small conference on tourism in the spring 2013