For several years, I taught a final year undergraduate module on the subject of foreign travellers in Japan. It was a primary source heavy module that mixed reading the travellers’ accounts together with theoretical and conceptual work, and finally a range of activities designed to access the ideas of the module from other approaches.
Here is a syllabus for the module.
This syllabus includes the core readings, but each week featured two sessions – one based on the core reading, and another that was often not trailed in advance. The analytic concepts that we worked on included ideas like authenticity, thinking spatially, interpreters and guides, orientalism and occidentalism, and truth in travel writing. In addition there were a range of activities such as photography, mapping, meditation, and sensory experiences. It was great fun to teach, and I would like to think to learn, as well as intellectually quite interesting. I’ve not go around (yet!) to converting any of the material into research or public writing, but I really should try to.
Fireflies 