Course description
The course focuses on the transformation of Italian cities under the pressure of globalized mass tourism. Specifically, it looks at the way in which Italian cities begun promising travelers the “restorative” wonders of a “return to the past” — access to a lost paradise, as it were, where still alive is, in Goethe’s words, the “idyllic dream of the first men.”
Since the beginning of modern tourism in the 19th century, in fact, ideas of Italy as “the past,” as a lost paradise untainted by the frenzy of modern life, and as a curative place for rebirth and renaissance, have all being seized upon by global tourism. From Gothic Venice, through imperial Rome and Greek Agrigento, the Italian city has been refashioned, rezoned, and repackaged so as to offer some kind of privileged experience of “the past.” Moreover, the tourist industry has provided the tourist with a veritable cornucopia of devices to keep remembering, and re-living time and again, that beautiful Italian moment.
The course explores the workings of such mnemonic devices associated with the tourist experience of Italian cities, such as the souvenir, the museum catalogue, the memorial plaque, the snapshot, the ruin, and the tourist book. A supplementary objective of the course is to introduce students, through short reading excerpts, to key aesthetic concepts, especially as they relate to our (touristic) experience of cities and objects from the past: What makes a chipped Greek vase of the 8th century B. C. “beautiful” and worth a visit at Naples National Archaeological Museum? In what sense is the Bridge of Sighs “romantic,” a courtyard in Cannaregio “picturesque,” and the Venice Lido “decadent”?

The course, designed with the “Cities and Global Change” specialization track in mind, will hinge on viewing and discussing one movie and one short reading per week:

Week 1: After the Grand Tour. Italy and/as the Past
Week 2: The Museum. Roberto Rossellini’s Viaggio in Italia (1954)
Week 3: The Picturesque. René Clément’s Purple Noon (1960)
Week 4: Stone Tablets and Commemorative Plaques. Ron Howard, Angels & Demons (2009)
Week 5: The Archeological Site. Bruce Lee’s The Way of the Dragon (1972)
Week 6: The Souvenir. Hiroshi Nishitani’s Amalfi: Rewards of the Goddess (2009)
Week 7: Rebirths and Renaissances. James Ivory’s A Room with a View (1985)
Week 8: Remembrance of Things Past. Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient (1996)
Week 9: Dark Memories. Tamar Tal-Anati’s Shalom Italia (2016)
Week 10: Old-Time Honor. Kim Hee-won’s Vincenzo (2021) — Episodes 1 and 2
Week 11: The Sublime. Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973)
Week 12: Conclusions

Learning outcomes of the course
At the end of the semester, students will be able to:

1. Develop critical views on the impact of mass tourism on the social, economic, political, and cultural fabric of cities.
2. Be able to recognize and discuss the key argument of a filmic or literary text.
3. Produce a collaborative presentation involving reading of scholarly publications and critical thinking.

Teaching and evaluation methods
The course will be delivered through a combination of lectures, seminar activities, site visits, and students’ group presentations. Site visits are an integral part of the class, and are not optional. Students are expected to take active part in class discussion and will produce, besides one group presentation per student, weekly blog entries (one entry per week) on the topics discussed.

Final grades will be composites of the following:
Class participation, preparation, and attendance: 30%
Weekly blog entries: 30%
Group Presentation: 40%

Bibliography
All course readings are in English and will consist of journal articles as well as book chapters selected from the following texts:

Benjamin, Walter. Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media. Harvard University Press, 2008.

Black, Jeremy. Italy and the Grand Tour. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

Cesari, Chiara De, and Ann Rigney. Transnational Memory: Circulation, Articulation, Scales. Walter de Gruyter, 2014.

Frow, John. “Tourism and the Semiotics of Nostalgia.” October 57 (1991): 123-51. Culler, Jonathan. “Semiotics of Tourism.” Framing The Sign:
Criticism and Its Institutions. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990.

Ferraro, J. M. Venice: History of the floating city. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Gleadhill, Emma. “Shopping for Souvenirs.” Taking Travel Home. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022.

Lennon, J. John, and Malcolm Foley. Dark Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disaster. London: Continuum, 2000.

Munk, Judith, anf Walter Munk. “Venice Hologram.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 116, No. 5 (Oct. 13, 1972), pp. 415-442.

Melotti, Marxiano. “Venice: Heritage and Tourism in the New Global World.” Mobilities and Hospitable Cities. Necastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2018.

Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux De Mémoire.” Representations 26 (1989): 7-24.

Radstone, Susannah, and Bill Schwarz. Memory: Histories, Theories, Debates. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010.

Stewart, Susan. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993.

Urry, John. The Tourist Gaze. London: Sage, 2002.

Last updated on October 28, 2025