Tourism is for many foreigners the primary point of contact with another nation’s social, cultural, and political realities. Popular travel literature in turn provides the prism from which tourists interpret those realities. Guidebooks are in this context invaluable cultural artifacts providing insight into popular attitudes, perceptions, and experiences from the time in which they were written. This paper will examine popular American travel guidebooks to Italy from the 1920s through the 1950s, capturing changing American travel tastes and preferences from the period as well as shifting American attitudes towards Italy and its volatile social-political landscape during a pivotal time in its national history. The paper will focus in particular on how Italian politics shaped American tourist perspectives and how popular tourism in turn mediated American views towards Italy’s shifting realities from the fascist era through the postwar reconstruction.
About the presenterDavid Aliano
David Aliano is an Associate Professor of Italian and History at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in New York City. He earned his Ph.D. and M. Phil. degrees from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He received his B.A. degree from Fordham University. He is the author of Mussolini’s National Project in Argentina (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2012). His research specializes in transnational Italian cultural history.