by Associate Professor Shiho Satsuka

The Diversifying Toronto Tourist Site Stories project was developed in response to
students’ strong interest and enthusiasm for conducting ethnographic fieldwork at
tourist sites in Toronto. Over the years, I have assigned a small-scale
autoethnographic fieldwork project in the third-year lecture course, ANT324:
Tourism and Globalization. In this assignment, students uncover layers of
competing and contrasting narratives at a tourist site, going beyond conventional
tourist representations in Toronto. Students have consistently expressed a desire to
go further, conducting full research projects, including participant observations and
interviews. I also teach ANT380: Craft of Social/Cultural Anthropology, a methods
course for socio-cultural anthropology, where students have similarly expressed
interest in applying ethnographic research skills to analyze real-world situations.
Meanwhile, I learned about the City of Toronto Museums’ exciting new initiative
to decolonize and diversify heritage stories from Professor Cara Krmpotich in
Museum Studies (see the Strategic and Action Plans). I reached out to the Toronto
History Museums and developed this project in partnership with them, with
support from the U of T Experiential Learning Office. The museums, it turns out,
are eager to learn how visitors experience their new initiatives aimed at
diversifying museum narratives.

Students are divided into two teams to conduct participant observation and
interviews at the Spadina Museum and Fort York. The focus is on two key aspects:
1) how the sites reflect the City of Toronto History Museums’ plans to diversify
and decolonize heritage stories; 2) how visitors experience and engage with these
efforts. Students write a report analyzing how visitors experience the museum
exhibitions and guided tours, share the reports with the museums, and present their
findings in presentations. Through this project, students not only develop their
research skills but also contribute to the partner organizations. Overall, this student
research project aims to explore and enrich the narratives of Toronto and its history
from diverse perspectives.

Please find the A&S News article on this project, “A&S students help reimagine
more inclusive visitor experiences at Fort York and Spadina Museum”