This blog will accompany the writing of a book-length manuscript on the role of tourism in the reconstruction of Austria as a nation after 1945. Arguing against the mainstream notion that Austria only used superficial touristic images to distract from its problematic “real” past (the involvement in the crimes of National Socialism), my project applies recent developments in tourism studies, cultural studies, critical theory, and cultural geography to show that the discourse of tourism was not the surface covering up Austria but, in fact, the discursive environment within which Austria could be reconstructed. In order to make my argument, I will use sources such as government documents, school projects, films, literary texts, and field notes from participant observations of Sound of Music tours in Salzburg.

Graml Gundolf

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