A01=Daniel R. Maher
Arkansas
Art Burton
Author_Daniel R. Maher
Baridi Nkokheli
Bass Reeves
Belle Starr
Buffalo Bill Cody
Category=GLZ
Category=JHM
Category=KJG
Category=KNS
Category=NHTB
Category=NK
Cherokee
Choctaw
Confederates in the attic
cultural heritage tourism
Culture and tourism
Daniel Maher
Dawes Severalty Act
deindustrialization
Deputy US Marshals
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Fort Gibson
Fort Smith
Frederick Jackson Turner
frontier
Frontier and pioneer life
Gaming Regulatory
globalization
hegemony
Heritage tourism
Historiography
imagineering otherness
Indian Reorganization Act
Judge Isaac C. Parker
Judith Butler
Kathleen Duval
Laura Zeigler
Logan Roots
Lone Ranger
Marita Sturken
Miss Laura's Visitor Center
Mythic Frontiers
National Park Service
neoliberalism
profit
Reenactment Guild of America
removal
Robert Frazer
True Grit
United States
Wild West
Zeke Proctor
Product details
- ISBN 9780813064185
- Weight: 477g
- Dimensions: 151 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 05 Mar 2019
- Publisher: University Press of Florida
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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The history of the Wild West has long been fictionalized in novels, films, and television shows. Catering to these popular representations, towns across America have created tourist sites connecting such tales with historical monuments. Yet these attractions stray from known histories in favor of the embellished past visitors expect to see and serve to craft a cultural memory that reinforces contemporary ideologies.
In Mythic Frontiers, Daniel Maher illustrates how aggrandized versions of the past, especially those of the “American frontier,” have been used to turn a profit. These imagined historical sites have effectively silenced the violent, oppressive, colonizing forces of manifest destiny and elevated principal architects of it to mythic heights. Examining the frontier complex in Fort Smith, Arkansas—where visitors are greeted at a restored brothel and the reconstructed courtroom and gallows of “Hanging Judge” Isaac Parker feature prominently—Maher warns that creating a popular tourist narrative and disconnecting cultural heritage tourism from history minimizes the devastating consequences of imperialism, racism, and sexism and relegitimizes the privilege bestowed upon white men.
In Mythic Frontiers, Daniel Maher illustrates how aggrandized versions of the past, especially those of the “American frontier,” have been used to turn a profit. These imagined historical sites have effectively silenced the violent, oppressive, colonizing forces of manifest destiny and elevated principal architects of it to mythic heights. Examining the frontier complex in Fort Smith, Arkansas—where visitors are greeted at a restored brothel and the reconstructed courtroom and gallows of “Hanging Judge” Isaac Parker feature prominently—Maher warns that creating a popular tourist narrative and disconnecting cultural heritage tourism from history minimizes the devastating consequences of imperialism, racism, and sexism and relegitimizes the privilege bestowed upon white men.
Daniel R. Maher is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith.
