Stanford and AUC Blog on Tourism
From January to March 2009, students in "The Rhetoric of Tourism" class at Stanford worked together with students in a rhetoric and writing class at the American University of Cairo on blog posts around the subject of tourism. On Stanford’s campus, we see tourists every day as they pour off tour buses at the Oval, walk around campus with a backwards-walking tour guide, and wander through the Rodin sculptures, cameras clicking. And so that's where the Stanford students started: by posting blog entries on the different forms of tourism we see on campus all the time. 
Later in the quarter, the students at Stanford and AUC worked together on perceived assumptions about tourism and tourist destinations in Egypt. The Stanford students started by exploring the cultural implications of Egyptian tourism as defined by the pyramids, and the Egyptian students responded by posting entries where they discussed living with touristic stereotypes. Digging deeper, we shared a rich discussion around an alternative and non-sanctioned form of tourism in Dahab, where the typical sort of sex tourism (men seeking women) is reversed (as women seek men). By working collaboratively on blog entries, the Stanford students worked hard to find an appropriate voice with which to communicate their ideas to the students in Egypt, ideas that demonstrated how some of their assumptions about cultural and gender norms were challenged by this tourism to Dahab.
Comments
This was a really exciting activity -- the rich interchange between students really impressed me, and I think the topic itself was a great match for a site like the CCR blog that is interested in helping people move past insider/outsider status to understand and then bridge cultural differences.
I look forward to reading more of your students' work with AUC in the future!
Posted by: Christine Alfano, Stanford Instructor | September 25, 2009 06:00 AM
What fantastic work your students did with Dr. Mark Michael's classes, Julia.
Uncovering the stereotypes, questioning what we take for granted - what about those Egyptian statues in Vegas?
Did any of the students keep in touch after these rich exchanges?
Posted by: Alyssa O'Brien | September 25, 2009 10:56 AM
I love to read articles that are informative, Thanks again for a nice site
Posted by: Faith Kohli | January 1, 2010 05:13 PM
That is some inspirational stuff. Never knew that opinions could be this varied. Thanks for all the enthusiasm to offer such helpful information here.
Posted by: Elsy Roselli | January 23, 2010 08:07 AM