FYS543

What is "tourism"? What is "pilgrimage"? Where does one begin and the other end? How has colonialism changed the ways people interact with religious sites – especially in Asia - and what does this mean for religion and travel in the twenty-first century? How have people written about religious travel over time? This course explores the relationship between tourism, pilgrimage, and colonial histories through reading and writing about these topics in the context of modern Buddhist Asia. Students discuss three writing genres (ethnographic account, travel memoir, and academic article) and explore the components of each, while learning to write in these styles.