Leisure Industries, Escape and Experience

This module offers students the opportunity to engage with a range of disciplines (including sociology, cultural studies, archaeology and geography as well as performance studies) to examine the organisation and commodification of leisure in contemporary society. It analyses the production of various sites of leisure – theme parks, heritage sites, tourist attractions, museums, and industrial regenerations – and considers the ways in which these are understood within frameworks of ‘free time’, ‘escape’ and ‘experience’. The impact of categories of gender, class, race and age on such frameworks is also explored. Students encounter both historical perspectives on the changing nature of leisure and contemporary representations of the tourist in a world characterised by mobility.