The history of travel rarely fits into neat academic categories. This session has multiple goals. One, to explore the various new directions in tourism history, how the study of travel shapes cultural, political, racial, and spiritual identities. Two, this session aims to do this by incorporating a variety of interdisciplinary methodologies, including urban studies, race history, religious studies, performance studies, and visual history.

This panel interrogates the various ways in which tourist experiences were marketed to Americans in the 20th century and what they reveal about U.S. identity, life, history, and culture. Los Angeles hotels during the interwar period created spaces of racial unity and respite. Visual practices of the Pan-American Highway marketed Latin America as a roadway of opportunity and promise, creating a diplomatic dimension to the tourist experience. Middle America theme parks offered the tourist a narrative of the American frontier, propagating the history of a dying past. Churches capitalized on the spiritual uplift often associated with travel, marketing church services as a way to enhance the travel experience within the national parks.