A world of images: tourism, gender and Hispanism in Georgiana Goddard King’s The Way to Saint James (1920)

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines the intertwining of early tourism, gender and scientific discourses in The Way to Saint James (1920), written by the American Art History professor Georgiana Goddard King. With the sponsorship of the Hispanic Society, Goddard King travelled to Spain several times during the first years of the twentieth century. This article analyses the overlap between a scientific narrative that focuses on the history, art, and architecture of Spain, on the one hand, and the gendered point of view that anticipates post-modern debates on scholarly knowledge, on the other. Secondly the relationship between this gendered perspective and the emergence of the so-called “tourist gaze” reveals the anxieties of contemporary tourism in its search for images and authenticity, while re-enacting the objective and distanced position of the scientific observer.