Tourism Imaginaries at the Disciplinary Crossroads: Place, Practice Media, ed. Maria Gravari-Barbas and Nelson Graburn, 2014
Le Petit Journal, which boasted a circulation of one million in the 1890s, was famed for the sens... more Le Petit Journal, which boasted a circulation of one million in the 1890s, was famed for the sensationalistic full-color front and back engraved images of its weekly supplement. Modern modes of transportation in the 1890-1914 period were associated with modernity, mobility, progress, speed, individuality, patriotism, colonial expansion, heroism, leisure, luxury, and sportsmanship. Yet the fascination with catastrophes and violence, as seen through the weekly supplement’s representations, reveals a darker side. The images constructed contradictory narratives, oscillating between the ideas of technological progress and technological failure, freedom and danger, the domination of nature and that of defeat by nature, and so on. Above all, the artfully designed images were meant to dramatize, shock, provide vicarious thrills, and be voyeuristic, rather than inform. The images reveal significant undercurrents of anxiety beneath the confidence in science, progress, and the imperial project. They also show that while the imagined ease with which dangerous travel was accomplished—mobility throughout the world—in fiction was continually checked by actualities, this fell short of actually revealing a gap between fantasy and reality, in that the dramatic forms used for representing the “real” blurred that gap.
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Papers by Hazel Hahn
Key words: modernism, rounded corners, architectural heritage, Ho Chi Minh City, Streamline Moderne, regional exchange, Phnom Penh
Books by Hazel Hahn
This collection explores built environments and visual narratives in Asia via cartography, icons and symbols in different historical settings. It grows out of a three-year project focusing on cultural exchange in the making of Asia’s boundaries as well as its architectural styles and achievements. The editors -- architectural scholars at University of Delaware, Seattle University, University of Washington and Harvard University, respectively – attracted contributions from Asia, Europe, and North America.
The manuscript consists of three sections – in Mapping Asia: Architectural Symbols from Medieval to Early Modern Periods, authors examine icons and symbols in maps and textual descriptions and other early evidence about Asian architecture. Incorporating archival materials from Asia and Europe, the essays present views of Asian architecture seen from those who lived on the continent, those who saw themselves residing along the margins, and those who identified themselves as outsiders. The second section, Conjugating Asia: The Long-Nineteenth Century and its Impetus, explores the construction of the field of Asian architecture and the political imagination of Asian built environments in the nineteenth century. It discusses the parallel narratives of colonialism and Orientalism in the construction of Asia and its architectural environment, mapping how empire-expanding influences from Europe and North America have defined “Asia” and its regions through new vocabularies and concepts, which include, among others, “Eurasia,” “Jap-Alaska,” “Asie coloniale,” “the Orient,” and “Further India.” The third section, Manifesting Asia: Building the Continent with Architecture, addresses the physical realization of “Asian” geographic ideas within a set of specific local and regional contexts in the twentieth century. It examines tangible constructions as legible documents of these notional constructions of Asia, and discusses their construction processes, materials and critical receptions as evidence of the physical'sreciprocal relationship to the conceptual. Regions and conditions covered include French Indochina, Iran, post-Soviet Central Asia, Japanese landscape, and the construction of theAfro-Asian built environment.
Key words: modernism, rounded corners, architectural heritage, Ho Chi Minh City, Streamline Moderne, regional exchange, Phnom Penh
This collection explores built environments and visual narratives in Asia via cartography, icons and symbols in different historical settings. It grows out of a three-year project focusing on cultural exchange in the making of Asia’s boundaries as well as its architectural styles and achievements. The editors -- architectural scholars at University of Delaware, Seattle University, University of Washington and Harvard University, respectively – attracted contributions from Asia, Europe, and North America.
The manuscript consists of three sections – in Mapping Asia: Architectural Symbols from Medieval to Early Modern Periods, authors examine icons and symbols in maps and textual descriptions and other early evidence about Asian architecture. Incorporating archival materials from Asia and Europe, the essays present views of Asian architecture seen from those who lived on the continent, those who saw themselves residing along the margins, and those who identified themselves as outsiders. The second section, Conjugating Asia: The Long-Nineteenth Century and its Impetus, explores the construction of the field of Asian architecture and the political imagination of Asian built environments in the nineteenth century. It discusses the parallel narratives of colonialism and Orientalism in the construction of Asia and its architectural environment, mapping how empire-expanding influences from Europe and North America have defined “Asia” and its regions through new vocabularies and concepts, which include, among others, “Eurasia,” “Jap-Alaska,” “Asie coloniale,” “the Orient,” and “Further India.” The third section, Manifesting Asia: Building the Continent with Architecture, addresses the physical realization of “Asian” geographic ideas within a set of specific local and regional contexts in the twentieth century. It examines tangible constructions as legible documents of these notional constructions of Asia, and discusses their construction processes, materials and critical receptions as evidence of the physical'sreciprocal relationship to the conceptual. Regions and conditions covered include French Indochina, Iran, post-Soviet Central Asia, Japanese landscape, and the construction of theAfro-Asian built environment.