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Events
Jan. 9 | Call for papers: Identities and Technocultures
A 2-day conference about American culture and technologies that examines how new technologies dominate and define Americaness in the US and abroad. Co-sponsored by the University of Iowa Center for Ethnic Studies and the Arts (CESA) and the Mid-America American Studies Association (MAASA).
Resources: Abstracts of American Studies Dissertations
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Goodyear, Frank H. "Constructing a National Landscape: Photography and Tourism in Nineteenth-Century America," American Studies Department, University of Texas at Austin, May 1998.
This dissertation examines photography’s impact on the growth of the commercial tourism trade in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In particular, I look at five different sites across America (Niagara Falls, Yosemite Valley, the Wisconsin Dells, the Adirondacks, and Yellowstone National Park) and discuss the manner in which local photographers assisted in the development of those environments. I contend that the new visual medium of photography not only advertised such places to potential visitors, but also helped to define the boundaries of the modern tourist experience to a new generation of American travelers. Photography prepared visitors for their journey, assisted in the manner in which they interacted with the site, and served as important mementos of their trip. In a period when America’s hegemonic culture struggled with questions concerning its identity, these photographers helped to construct a new national landscape that tourists could easily consume. Their images naturalized this vision for the land at a time when other competing forces often contested this new usage.
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