Making the Fatherland: The Argentine Automobile Club and the Promotion of Domestic Industrial Tourism

As part of the WashU-University of Warwick partnership, we are pleased to collaborate with the Center for the Humanities to host Liz Chant, Assistant Professor of Global Sustainable Development at Warwick. 

Prof. Chant's talk, "Making the Fatherland: The Argentine Automobile Club and the Promotion of Domestic Industrial Tourism," will explore the interconnecting avenues between the Automóvil Club Argentino (ACA) and Argentina's nation building project. 

Established in 1904, the Argentine Automobile Club was key to the development of leisure tourism in Argentina. On this presentation, Prof. Chant analyses ACA’s promotion of domestic tourism to industrial sites in their monthly travel magazine,  Automovilismo. Focussing on the interwar period, Prof. Chant examines how the magazine platformed infrastructure and heavy industry as part of emerging leisure itineraries. With a particular focus on visits to oil facilities, this presentation highlights the role of domestic industrial tourism in Argentine nation building and underscore the contribution of ACA to a sense of national identity inherently tied to state oil production. 

This talk is free and open to all!