This course explores the intersections of tourism, modernization, and the environment in contemporary Spain through the analysis of diverse forms of cultural production from 1880 to 2025. Focusing on the country’s process of economic modernization—especially in the contexts of developmentalism, neoliberalism, and the changes resulting from the 2008 economic crisis—we will examine how mass tourism has shaped urban growth, the construction of national and regional identities, and the circulation of discourses about Spain’s cultural difference (“Spain is different,” according to the famous 1960s slogan). We will study a range of cultural “objects,” including posters, photography, graphic novels, architecture, journalistic articles, and documentary film. Drawing on environmental cultural studies and tourism studies, the course investigates how contemporary cultural practices register, question, and reimagine the relationships among modernization, ecology, and identity in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Spain. Prerequisite: SPAN 228.
CRN 54645
T/TH 9:30-10:50 AM; 382 Education Building
Instructor: Anna Torres-Cacoullos
Course image: “La Globalización” (Oriol Maspons, 1961)