Title: Beyond the Grand Tour: re-thinking the education abroad narrative for US higher education in the 1920s

Authors: Eduardo Contreras Jr.

Addresses: University of Portland, Buckley Center 106, MSC 193, Portland, OR 97203 USA

Abstract: This paper utilises primary source documents from the first officially sanctioned US study abroad programs in the 1920s to argue that the discourse about the first study abroad programs for US students was a break from the Grand Tour tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Instead, this paper suggests that study abroad represented an experimental and innovative approach to the acquisition of knowledge for US undergraduates. The discourse of those who created these programs and those who participated was distinct from the Grand Tour in three ways that are described in the paper as, distinct by design, distinct by omission and distinct by experience. These three areas of distinction refute the contemporary narrative that conflates the Grand Tour with study abroad.

Keywords: study abroad; Grand Tour; travel; tourism; USA; United States; higher education; education abroad; 1920s; knowledge acquisition; US undergraduates.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTA.2015.071931

International Journal of Tourism Anthropology, 2015 Vol.4 No.3, pp.238 - 251

Received: 07 Jan 2014
Accepted: 24 Jul 2014
Published online: 24 Sep 2015 *

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