Dal Grand Tour all’educazione globale: gli immaginari europei nelle performance visuali di viaggio

Abstract

From the Grand Tour to global education: European imaginaries in visual travel performances

This paper frames international student mobilities throughout Europe as a novel Grand Tour to revise the social and material tourist encounter with the continent and ordinary life therein, and advance cultural and political debates concerning the European space. This is done by analysing how European imaginaries are enacted in three tourist pictures of Rome, collected through photo-elicited focus groups with international students. The methods employed in the latest visual and tourism studies were used herein. This study shows how persistent and often stereotyped representations of Europe come together with critical readings of the European society, and highlights the importance – in the geographical analysis of tourist photography – of including more-than-epresentational accounts of what happens before and after shooting a tourist picture.