Dean of Graduate School Presents Research on Caribbean Vacation Resort Practices that Mediate Ideas about Race
Takoma Park, MD (February 10, 2015) The means through which an all-inclusive Caribbean vacation resort chain mediates ideas about race was the subject of research by Nicole Currier, dean of Washington Adventist University’s School of Graduate and Professional Studies, who presented at a fall conference of the Mid-Atlantic Popular Culture and American Culture Association in Baltimore, Maryland.
Currier participated in a travel/tourism panel at the conference and presented her paper, “Like a State Within a State.” In it, she describes how an all-inclusive resort chain in the Caribbean preempts spontaneous contact between tourists and locals. Guests at the resort often spend their entire vacations in the safety of the property, without ever seeing the rest of the island. In the absence of spontaneous contact between tourists and locals, the resort plays a central role in mediating ideas about the islanders to guests.
In her study, Currier analyzes promotional literature that draws upon the rhetoric of the colonial-era plantations, along with resort architecture and furniture that visually evokes plantation life. She argues that references to the colonial-era plantation allow tourists to fantasize their own escape from disenfranchisement by highlighting the servility of others.
Not only does Currier explore how the resort chain constructs a plantation fantasy for the benefit of first-world tourists, but she also points out that it simultaneously allows them to disavow their own role in perpetuating racial/national hierarchies and power relations by offering them the possibility of participating in what is framed as socially responsible tourism.
Currier’s work raises questions about the connection between tourism and the formation of racial ideologies, suggesting a need for dialogue between the fields of critical tourism studies and race/ethnic studies. She plans to continue to research how tourists’ encounters shape their racial ideologies long after they return home.
Currier has been on the staff of Washington Adventist University since 2011. She earned her master’s degree in American Studies from University of Massachusetts, Boston in 2002, and her bachelor’s degree in history from Atlantic Union College in 1997. Since 2013, she has been working on a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Maryland, College Park.
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Washington Adventist University is Montgomery County’s only four-year private college. Part of the Seventh-day Adventist system of higher education, Washington Adventist University has been educating college students since 1904 on a 19-acre campus in suburban Takoma Park, close to the nation’s capital. A total of 1,080 students of all faiths participate in the university’s eight graduate and 32 undergraduate programs. The 2014 edition of U.S. News & World Report ranked Washington Adventist University among the best regional colleges in the north.
Media Contacts:
Angie Crews, 301-891-4134, acrews@wau.edu
Donna Bigler, 240-286-1169, dbigler@wau.edu