As an emerging heritage industry in the South, literary tourism has steadily gained popularity over the past three decades through the commodification of Southern authors and the physical landmarks they left behind. A concerted effort is being made in the construction and reconstruction of these sites, which are designed to sell a specific story to visitors, though often at the cost of authenticity. This exacts a price on the legacies of Southern authors by exaggerating or changing their personal stories for the purpose of entertainment and profit, and adding a new dimension to the mythology of Southern literature. In this paper, I will explore the benefits and consequences of the loss of authenticity at literary landmarks associated with Ernest Hemingway, Eudora Welty, Harper Lee, and William Faulkner, as well as examine the role of cultural expectation in the way these sites are designed and developed. Building on past research, I will argue that perceptions about potential audiences for these sites are playing an ever-larger role in the way they are designed and presented by curators and caretakers, and that it would benefit the legacies of Southern authors and Southern culture in general not to forgo authenticity in favor of profit when determining how best to tell an author’s story.
About the presenterCourtney Watson
Courtney Watson, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of English and the Director of Humanities & Social Sciences at Jefferson College of Health Sciences in Roanoke, VA. Her area of scholarly interest is Southern literature and culture, with a focus on simulacra and simulation in literary tourism in the South. Her article “Tourist Trap: Re-branding History and the Commodification of the South in Literary Tourism in Mississippi” was published in Studies in Popular Culture in 2014.