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Events
Jun. 30 | 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies due
Jun. 30 | 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies Teaching, Advising, and Program Development due
Oct. 1 | Travel Grants for Graduate Students
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Resources: Abstracts of American Studies Dissertations
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Comer, Douglas C. "Ritual Ground: Bent's Old Fort, Ideology, and the Annexation of the Southwest," Department of American Studies, University of Maryland, College Park, May 1993. Advisor: Mary Corbin Sies (2, 10, 8)
Bent’s Old Fort was crucial to the success of the almost bloodless 1846 Mexican War, which eliminated France, Spain, and Britain as contenders for the territory in the trans-Mississippi West. Yet because the fort did its work in ways that are more broadly cultural than political or military, its role in the transition of the United States from third-rate to world power is not well understood. Beginning in about 1830, until 1849, the fort implemented ritualized trade that shaped the cognitive systems of participating groups (including Anglo). The exchange evoked affective response (Durkheim’s “sentiment”) that won the “hearts and minds” of those involved. Cultural alterations were brought about by ritualistic behavior that depended upon the fort and its landscape, which propagated panoptic order, the centralized control of the modern world. The reconstructed fort today serves to maintain modern values. Reenactments of historic (“mythological”) events there reflect the social tensions that arise in “high-grid, low-group, ego-centered”—that is, modern—societies. Such societies typically fracture along the lines of “high” and “low” ritual, both of which reenact the modern mythology of competence and luck. These rituals occur in the interpretive program of the fort. They provide examples of ritual that shapes culture in the modern world.
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