Unit information: Travels in Space and Time 1850-Present (Level I Special Field) in 2017/18

Unit name	Travels in Space and Time 1850-Present (Level I Special Field)
Unit code	HIST20097
Credit points	20
Level of study	I/5
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24)
Unit director	Dr. Andy Flack
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	HIST23008 Special Field Project
School/department	Department of History (Historical Studies)
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

We come into contact with the wider world in a variety of ways; from the window offered by the television and a trip to the local museum, to expensive forays into exotic worlds. Experiencing this world demands the use of all of our senses and it evokes strong and sometimes conflicting emotions. However, only recently have historians turned their attention to both the histories of tourism and to more-than-visual ways of encountering the world. This unit engages with approaches at the heart of histories of tourism, the emotions and the senses to consider the development of travel in relation to the UK and the USA since the middle of the nineteenth century. Beginning with the Great Exhibition (1851) and the domestic cultures of imperialism that spawned it, the unit will chart a course across the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Key themes will include the consumption of the world at home: in museums, exhibitions, and zoos; hunting with the gun and with the camera; adventure tourism; extreme environments: caves, mountains and underwater; space exploration; virtual travels; ecotourism; the impact of air and marine technologies on foreign travel; travel and sensory deprivation.

Unit Aims:

• To place students in direct contact with the current research interests of the academic tutor
• To develop students’ ability to locate and work with primary sources
• To develop students’ abilities to integrate primary source material into a wider historical analysis
• To develop students’ ability to learn independently within a small-group context
• To introduce students to historical conceptualisations of emotions and sensory experience.
• To develop students’ understanding of the development of travel and tourism across the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
• To develop students’ understanding of the changing role of technology in facilitating travel and in crafting sensory experience

To empower students to engage in ethical debates around the nature of travel.

Intended Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of the unit, students will be able to demonstrate:

1. the ability to work with a widening range of primary sources relating to travel, the senses and emotions in British and American history

2. an understanding of historical conceptualisations of emotion and sensory experience.

3. an understanding of the development of travel across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

4. an understanding of the role of technology in crafting human engagements with the world around us.

5. the ability to engage in current ethical debates about the cultural and environmental impacts of travel.

Teaching Information

1 x two-hour seminar weekly

Assessment Information

1 x two-hour exam (100%) [ILOs 1-5]

Reading and References

Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses (New York, 1990)

Richard Altick, The Shows of London (Cambridge, MA, 1978)

C. Classen et al, A Cultural History of the Senses (London, 2014)

David Edgerton, The shock of the oId (Oxford, 2007)

John MacKenzie, The Empire of Nature (Manchester, 1988)

Jan Plamper, The History of Emotions (Oxford 2014)