Observation Points

by Patin, Thomas; Bednar, Robert M. (CON); Clark, Gregory (CON); Peters, Peter Frank (CON); Neumann, Mark (CON)

• ISBN13: 9780816651467
• ISBN10: 0816651469
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-04-25
• Publisher: Univ of Minnesota Pr

Summary

National parks are the places that present ideas of nature to Americans: Zion, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone bring to mind quintessential and awe-inspiring wilderness. By examining how rhetoric-particularly visual rhetoric-has worked to shape our views of nature and the "natural" place of humans, Observation Pointsoffers insights into questions of representation, including the formation of national identity. As Thomas Patin reveals, the term "nature" is artificial and unstable, in need of constant maintenance and reconstruction. The process of stabilizing its representation, he notes, is unavoidably political. America's national parks and monuments show how visual rhetoric operates to naturalize and stabilize representations of the environment. As contributors demonstrate, visual rhetoric is often transparent, structuring experience while remaining hidden in plain sight. Scenic overlooks and turnouts frame views for tourists. Visitor centers, with their display cases and photographs and orientation films, provide their own points of view-literally and figuratively. Guidebooks, brochures, and other publications present still other ways of seeing. At the same time, images of America's "natural" world have long been employed for nationalist and capitalist ends, linking expansionism with American greatness and the "natural" triumph of European Americans over Native Americans. The essays collected here cover a wide array of subjects, including park architecture, landscape painting, public ceremonies, and techniques of display. Contributors are from an equally broad range of disciplines-art history, geography, museum studies, political science, American studies, and many other fields. Together they advance a provocative new visual genealogy of representation. Contributors: Robert M. Bednar, Southwestern U, Georgetown, Texas; Teresa Bergman, U of the Pacific; Albert Boime, UCLA; William Chaloupka, Colorado State U; Gregory Clark, Brigham Young U; Stephen Germic, Rocky Mountain Colle≥ Gareth John, St. Cloud State U, Minnesota; Mark Neumann, Northern Arizona U; Peter Peters, Maastricht U; Cindy Spurlock, Appalachian State U; David A. Tschida, U of Wisconsin, Eau Claire; Sabine Wilke, U of Washington.

Author Biography

Thomas Patin is professor of art history and director of the School of Art at Northern Arizona University. He is the author of Discipline and Varnish: Rhetoric, Subjectivity, and Counter Memory in the Museum.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Naturalizing Rhetoric	p. ix
Being Here, Looking There Mediating Vistas in the National Parks of the Contemporary American West	p. 1
Remembering Zion Architectural Encounters in a National Park	p. 29
Roadside Wilderness U.S. National Park Design in the 1950s and 1960s	p. 55
Critical Vehicles Crash the Scene Spectacular Nature and Popular Spectacle at the Grand Canyon	p. 77
How German is the American West? The Legacy of Caspar David Friedrich's Visual Poetics in American Landscape Painting	p. 100
Yellowstone National Park in Metaphor Place and Actor Representations in Visitor Publications	p. 119
Image/Text/Geography Yellowstone and the Spatial Rhetoric of Landscape	p. 140
Can Patriotism be Carved in Stone? A Critical Analysis of Mount Rushmore's Orientation Films	p. 165
Thinking Like a Mountain Mount Rushmore's Gaze	p. 187
George Catlin's Wilderness Utopia	p. 207
Memorials and Mouring Recovering Native Resistance in and to the Monuments of the Nation	p. 229
America's Best Idea Environmental Public Memory and the Rhetoric of Conservation Civics	p. 247
AMmerica in Ruins Parks, Poetics, and Politics	p. 267
Contributors	p. 291
Index	p. 293
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