Stefanie Benjamin

Transforming Mount Airy into Mayberry: Film-Induced Tourism as Place-Making

Film-induced tourism is increasingly popular in the United States and globally. Scholars have tended to emphasize the effect of movies and television in forming the image of tourist destinations and thus influencing traveler motivation and experience. In this article, we shift discussion of film tourism beyond simply place image formation to consider it in the broader context of place-making. Such a perspective offers a fuller recognition of the material, social, and symbolic effects and practices that underlie the construction of film tourism destinations and their place identities as well as the ideologies, power relations and inequalities that become inscribed into the place transformation process. We focus on film tourism in Mount Airy, North Carolina, the birth place of television actor Andy Griffith, and delve into the remaking of his home town into a simulated version of Mayberry. Griffith popularized the fictional town of Mayberry in his 1960s television series and it continues to resonate with fans of the show. Mount Airy is marketed to visitors as the “real life Mayberry,” despite what Griffith has said to the contrary, and the city hosts an annual Mayberry Days Festival, which we visited and photographed in 2010. A preliminary interpretation is offered of the landscape changes, bodily performances, and social tensions and contradictions associated with the remaking of Mount Airy into Mayberry. We also assert the need to address the social responsibility and sustainability of this transformation, particularly in light of the competing senses of place in Mount Airy, generational and racial changes in the travel market, and the way in which African Americans are potentially marginalized in this conflation of the “real” and the “reel.”

Heritage Site Visitation and Attitudes toward African American Heritage Preservation An Investigation of North Carolina Residents

Understanding disparities in visitation rates to heritage sites and patterns in public support for preservation and remembrance of African American heritage could greatly inform decision-making and management philosophies of park/historic site operators, preservationists, and other entrepreneurs. Informed by critical theory, this study examined heritage site visitation and attitudes toward remembrance and preservation of African American heritage among North Carolina (NC) residents. Telephone interviews were completed by 843 residents investigating their heritage site visitation patterns and support for African American heritage. The results suggest that race, age, education, income, frequency of travel, and voting record impact variation in heritage site visitation among NC residents while race, age, education, the presence of retirees or children in the household, voting record, and identification as a Southerner influenced attitudes toward African American preservation. This study contributes to the critical analysis of how patterns in heritage site visitation and public support of preservation perpetuate racialization of the travel experience.

Film tourism event longevity: lost in Mayberry

The purpose of this study is to examine a US festival widely known for attracting television fan tourists, build a traveler profile or typology of festival goers, and reflect on how the behavioral segmentation of these tourists may affect the longevity of the film tourism event and the broader planning of the destination community. Specifically, this study examines the Mayberry Days Festival, an annual event held in Mount Airy, North Carolina. Mount Airy is the birthplace and boyhood home of actor, Andy Griffith, whose television series (The Andy Griffith Show) was set in the fictional hamlet of Mayberry. Online survey invitation cards were distributed during the 2010 Mayberry Days Festival to gather data on the sociodemographic characteristics, motivations, perceptions, and economic impact of the attendee to comprehend how sustainable the Mayberry Days Festival will be for Mount Airy. Results suggest that visitors are drawn to Mount Airy for a variety of reasons and that The Andy Griffith Show is not necessarily the main motivator. It is important for the towns tourism promoters not to get �lost in Mayberry� as they plan for alternative marketing and attraction development in the future.

Performing a different narrative: museum theater and the memory-work of producing and managing slavery heritage at southern plantation museums

Abstract In the southeastern United States, operators of plantation museums have traditionally engaged in a selective and romanticised remembrance of the antebellum past that has regrettably silenced and marginalised the historical experiences and struggles of enslaved African people. More recently, some plantation managers have sought to engage in the ‘memory-work’ using artistic practices to reconstruct and interpret slavery heritage for visitors. Our study explores museum theatre as a form of memory-work and suggests that theatrical performances of the memories of enslavement are an increasingly important but not yet fully understood strategy for recovering, embodying, and representing a different and hopefully more just narrative about enslaved Africans. We visit three plantation museums where managers hosted a theatrical performance of enslaved oral histories and explore the motivations and experiences of managers and the director of the slave performance. Realising the power and efficacy of theatrical performance as memory-work practice requires understanding how the management of the interpretation process can be difficult. We delve into the emotion-laden challenges confronting slavery-related museum theatre development at the North Carolina plantations and discuss the creative response formulated at the sites to help visitors work through unexpected feelings and understandings about the past.

Hospitality Faculty Mentoring Program for Assistant Professors

ABSTRACT Assistant professors will be the staple of future hospitality programs within academia. Given that most tenure-track professors being older than age 50, colleges and universities acknowledge that attrition might have a significant impact on future academic learning environments. Many hospitality programs have devised current mentorship programs to assist tenure-track assistant professors during their maturation process to associate professor. The conundrum lies in knowing what constitutes an effective mentorship program, especially when there is no notable research on mentorship programs within the hospitality academy. A phenomenological study was used to explore the lived experiences of 8 tenure-track and tenured faculty members within the hospitality academy. Results indicated that leadership traits were synonymous with servant leadership, which prompts the need for a new model for mentoring hospitality faculty.

Tweeting The Black Travel Experience: Social Media Counter-Narrative Stories as Innovative Insight on #TravelingWhileBlack

African-Americans in the United States have long since been confronted with harassment and discrimination while traveling because of segregated lodging, restaurants, and other leisure activities. However, African-Americans/Blacks are one of the fastest-growing tourist groups. This work builds on previous research on the Black travel experience analyzing over 300 tweets using the trending hashtag #TravelingWhileBlack through a critical race theory lens. By analyzing how Black tourists are traveling, this study reveals how experiential knowledge of Black travelers can contribute to the learning environment of the tourism industry. Three emergent themes were identified: (1) occurrences of racism, (2) awareness of being Black while traveling, and (3) meaningful experiences traveling while Black, suggesting that experiential knowledge of travelers of color brings different perspectives, which will, it is hoped, move toward eliminating all forms of subordination and create a more just society.

A critical discourse analysis of racial violence in South Carolina, U.S.A.: implications for traveling while Black

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to present a rich, detailed case that illustrates the way in which the discourse of racial violence has been constructed in the United States (U.S.), and how that has impacted Black travel. Using South Carolina, a state centrally-located along the East coast with historic, political, and social ties to the U.S. South as the context for this analysis, this paper employs a critical discourse analysis to examine the intersection of racial violence and tourism, situating cases of violence – historic to the modern. This study makes a case for more focused attention on the intersection of tourism and violence within the literature, as well as a call to the tourism industry to be proactive to discourses of violence, demonstrate a desire for diversity in their visitors, consider the critical issues of racial representation in their tourism products, and be aware of the emerging organizations supporting and facilitating Black travel.