Amy Holberg: Site Specific Wandering: Jewish Culture and Heritage Tourism

"Site-Specific Wandering: Jewish Culture and Heritage Tourism” This presentation focuses on the central place travel and tourism have come to occupy in secular Jewish culture. Combining claims to both the fact-based, traditional truths offered by history texts and museum exhibits with the experiential truths more associated with art, fiction, and memoir, heritage travel purports to provide a Jewish experience of the past through the remnants that exist in the present. The myth of the Wandering Jew provides an intriguing backdrop for a discussion of Jewish memorial sites, travel guides, commercial tours, and independent travel documentaries.

Though many of these cultural products are best described as part of entertainment and leisure culture, each is also responding to similar desires for Jewish experiences of the past, and raises questions about history, truth, and memory.

Event Sponsor
International Cultural Studies, UH Manoa - East West Center

More Information
Kalawaia Moore, 944-7243, culture@hawaii.edu, http://www2.hawaii.edu/~culture

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