Paper short abstract:

Using maps of the heritage site of Annapolis, Maryland as a case study, this paper draws out a dialectic based on the experience of place from the views of tourists and residents of the historic district.

Paper long abstract:

[E-PAPER] Heritage tourism sites use forms of material culture as a means of creating brand recognition. These forms, be they maps, postcards, brochures or stock photographs not only draw attention to elements of the particular site that are seen as delineating it's significance of place, but also seek to affect a scripting of the site's experience on the part of visitors. Visitors are guided to seek out particular elements of a heritage site that they have seen in tourist material culture, affecting in part what has been termed a 'tourist gaze'. The results of this process is an experience of place that can be said to be real-and-imagined; real in that the site is experienced phenomenologically in the present, and imagined in the sense that there is a pre-cognized vision of the site that is enacted through the consumption of tourist material culture.

Using mostly maps of the heritage site of Annapolis, Maryland as a case example, this paper seeks to complicate this process by drawing out a dialectic based on the experience of place from the views of tourists and residents of the historic district. Issues addressed within the paper will focus on the materiality of tourist literature and the scripting of a tourist experience within the heritage district; psychogeographies of the historic district as experienced by long term residents; and the political problems that emerge through Annapolis' contested definition as a heritage place.

E-paper: this Paper will not be presented, but read in advance and discussed

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