Traveling to the End of Empire: Tourism and Anti-Racism in the Era of Decolonization

FAIN: FT-264785-19

Jessica Lynne Pearson
Macalester College (St. Paul, MN 55105-1899)

Research and writing leading to publication of a book on the role of tourism and decolonization after World War II.

"Traveling to the End of Empire" will be the first global history of tourism and decolonization in the twentieth century. It will explore the way that former colonies and former colonizers have used tourist infrastructure—such as museums, exhibitions, monuments, and guided tours—to come to terms with, or to erase, their colonial past. This book will define decolonization as both the formal end of empire and an ongoing process that aims to dismantle hierarchies of race and civilization. It will look critically at the ways in which sites for tourists support or ignore the broader goals of the post-1945 global anti-racism movement, with a particular emphasis on the role that UNESCO played in shaping the global landscape of tourism in the second half of the twentieth century. This fellowship would support two months of research in the United Kingdom. [Edited by staff]