For this assignment, you will read “Instagram Abroad”, which can be found in Week 11 Readings. I marked in blue sections that you can skip to cut down on your reading.
Task:
1. What are the four main types of images that the article discusses? (The author says there are three, but he includes a fourth.) Describe them using your own words and explain how they rely on colonial imagery/colonial attitudes.
2. Some have described A Small Place as a counter-travel narrative: instead of describing the island as a tourist sees it (from the moment they step off the plane), which is what travel writing typically does, she describes what the tourist doesn’t see, or how the native sees the tourist. Smith’s article gives us an opportunity to see the kind of typical tourist perspective Kincaid might be responding to. Although Instagram didn’t exist when Kincaid was writing, as Smith argues, there is a long history behind these motifs–for centuries they appeared in paintings and on postcards and in writing. Put the two texts together: draw a connection between Smith’s analysis and a specific moment in Kincaid’s argument in A Small Place. Use a specific example from each text.
3. Pick one of the following to respond to:
Nedra Reynolds argued that we must not forget the “material conditions” of spaces and Smith argues a few times in the article that tourists’ attitudes towards these locales have very real effects on those spaces and/or that they ignore the real conditions of those places. What is one way that tourism impacts local areas, according to Smith? OR What is one way that tourists regularly elide the “material conditions” of the locales they visit, according to Smith?
Nedra Reynolds writes that “Places, whether textual, material, or imaginary, are constructed and reproduced not simply by boundaries but also by practices, structures of feeling, and sedimented features of habitus. Theories of writing, communication, and literacy…should reflect this deeper understanding of place.” How do you understand this quote in relation to the reading?
4. What’s a question or quote you hope to discuss in class after reading A Small Place and “Instagram Abroad”?
LINK TO READING: https://fiu.instructure.com/courses/77311/files/13030120/download?verifier=3MS5JnxuyqFEOgxdGozBiwtQt4grmkehc8fQWt43&wrap=1
