Baker, Alan R.H. Geography and History: Bridging the Divide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
This book provides a fusion of the disciplines of history and geography and discusses where and how time and space overlap. This provides a theoretical insight into how to understand, analyze, and explore places (situated contexts) from both of these lenses together. In particular, the sections about “Landscape geographies and histories” and “Environmental geographies and histories” are relevant to the theoretical character of my research.
Barthel-Boucher, Diane. Cultural Heritage and the Challenge of Sustainability. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 2013.
This book provides both a theoretical insight into the notion of cultural heritage, or the histories of culture which remain (or don’t), and a framework for thinking of these relics of cultural heritage as under threat from climate change. This text has important information regarding the preservation of human history in changing landscapes and the complexities of that preservation.
Butcher, Jim. The Moralisation of Tourism: Sun, sand… and saving the world?” in Contemporary Geographies of Leisure, Tourism, and Mobility ed. Michael Hall. London: Routledge, 2003.
This book explores the moral implications of nature-based tourism and argues that eco-friendly and culturally concerned tourism is based on false pretenses of environmental and cultural fragility. This text critiques assumptions that tourism is essentially harmful and that eco-tourism is less harmful. This is an important insight into the moral quality and perception of tourism.
Cronon, William. “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.” William Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995, 69-90.
Cronon provides an overview of the history and etymology of wilderness and wild in American language, history, and thought. This is a foundational paper regarding the nature/culture binary that presents a constructivist viewpoint to the questions surrounding wilderness in the US. This paper has large implications for the discourse, purpose, and inherent character of wilderness.
Dant, Sara. 2008. “Making Wilderness Work: Frank Church and the American Wilderness Movement.” Pacific Historical Review 77 (2): 237–72. doi:10.1525/phr.2008.77.2.237.
Idaho Senator Frank Church (served 1957–1981) is one of the most important and underappreciated participants in the politics of the American wilderness movement. Church neither originated the wilderness idea nor crafted the language of the original Wilderness Act, but he made wilderness work. Although his legislative compromises and pragmatic politics sometimes infuriated wilderness purists, they were essential to the passage of all three wilderness bills: the Wilderness Act of 1964, the Eastern Wilderness Areas Act of 1974, and the Endangered American Wilderness Act of 1978. As his legislative record demonstrates, Church was not only at the vanguard of the evolving definition of wilderness in America but also established a viable process for designating wilderness areas. Church’s coalition-building vision of wilderness as a communally defined natural space, not necessarily “untrammeled by man,” became the standard for wilderness designation, and his enduring legacy is amodel of citizen cooperation.
Fleming, Robert. Hemingway and the Natural World. Moscow, Idaho : University of Idaho Press, 1999.
This is a collection of essays which each treat Hemingway’s life and work through the lens of the natural world. The collection follows Hemingway’s life chronologically by region, beginning in the upper Midwest and discussing the relationship between masculinity and the outdoors in Hemingway’s work. It then treats Hemingway’s life abroad and concludes with Hemingway’s last days and his death in Ketchum, Idaho. Due to the recent naming of a wilderness area in Idaho after Hemingway, this collection provides insight into Hemingway’s career in relation to his symbol as a landscape.
Gottfried, Herbert. Landscape on American Guides and View Books: Visual History of Touring and Travel. Landham: Lexington Books, 2013.
This book in situated within a long-term relationship between landscape and American society, and the role of guidebooks and view books in processing landscape experiences. Analyzing images and pamphlets as subgenres of travel writing, this book explores the role of image and vision in touristic experiences of America between 1880 and 1940. While the analysis of images and pamphlets is relevant in contemporary studies of American landscape tourism, the historical period provides an important context for understanding the touristic histories of the American West.
Hall, Michael C. and Stephen Boyd. “Nature-based Tourism in Peripheral Areas: Introduction” in Nature-Based Tourism in Peripheral Areas: Development or Disaster? Ed. C. Michael Hall and Stephen Boyd. Tonawanda: Channel View Publications, 2005. 3-20.
In this introduction to their edited collection, Hall and Boyd define nature-based tourism and peripheral areas. While much of this book focuses on Europe, Africa, and Australia, the framework of nature-based tourism and peripheral areas provides a way to aptly categorize places in the American West and offers a glimpse into a global level of broader implications.
Hines, J Dwight. 2010. “In Pursuit of Experience: The Postindustrial Gentrification of the Rural American West.” Ethnography 11(2): 285-308.
Contemporary rural gentrification — the colonization of rural communities and small-towns by members of the ex-urban middle class — is a nationwide phenomenon that contradicts nearly two centuries of US urbanization. While previous research primarily describes such counter-urbanization as representing a profound divergence from previous patterns (i.e. urbanization, mass production/consumption, etc.), Hines contendd that rural gentrification is best understood as the product of both continuity and change relative to the ideas/practices of Modernity and current postindustrialization. Based on ethnographic research conducted in a community in south-central Montana, this paper presents evidence that the choice by middle-class newcomers to migrate to the rural US is simultaneously the product of: 1) the continued efficacy of the Modern ideals of authenticity and progress; and 2) their aspirations to distinguish themselves as members of an emerging class faction — the postindustrial middle class (PIMC) — through their emphasis upon the production and consumption of experiences.
Knickerbocker, Scott. Ecopoetics: The Language of Nature, the Nature of Language.” Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012.
This is a highly theoretical exploration of a recent form of literary criticism called ecocristicism. Knickerbocker explores Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, Richard Wilbur, and Sylvia Plath each through an ecocriticism lens. The theoretical assumption underlying the book is that all poetry and literature occurs within nature; that there could be no human creation without the physical, nonhuman world that precedes, exceeds, and environs it. The realm of ecocriticism is quite relevant to my academic double major with English and is an obvious and rich overlap that I wish to further develop.
Lawson, Victoria, Lucy Jarosz, and Anne Bonds. 2010. “Articulations of Place, Poverty, and Race: Dumping Grounds and Unseen Grounds in the Rural American Northwest.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 100(3): 655-677.
This project extends poverty research by addressing the lack of knowledge about place and race differences in poverty processes (Blank 2005). Rural places experience a range of modes of articulation within the global division of rural labor and we observe three distinct modes of articulation in the American Northwest: “playgrounds,” “dumping grounds,” and “unseen grounds.” We attend to the recursive relations between political-economic restructuring and the discursive production of social difference across class and race lines. Poverty is produced in the reciprocal relations among local historical, ecological, and social processes and the articulation of those places with new rounds of capital accumulation under neoliberal restructuring. Our empirical investigation focuses on white and Latino poverty across nonmetropolitan counties of the American Northwest (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana). We first map county-level patterns of white and Latino poverty in relation to county-level economic restructuring during the 1990s across the region. We then employ in-depth comparative case study research to explore the intersections of specific forms of neoliberal restructuring with place-based historical, ecological, and social processes to understand rural white and Latino poverty in the region.
Long, Patrick T. “For Residents and Visitors Alike: Seeking Tourism’s Benefits, Minimizing Tourism’s Costs.” Seeing and Being Seen: Tourism in the American West. Ed David M. Wrobel and Patrick T. Long. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001. 70-90.
This article explores the costs and benefits of tourism to local communities and ends with a series of recommendations for tourist destinations. Long describes the economic incentives and cultural disincentives of developing a tourist economy for communities in the resource dependent west. His recommendations include social justice and environmental considerations for developing tourist economies.
MacCannell, Dean. The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: Schocken Books, 1976.
MacCannell uses the tourist as a model to describe the condition of “modern man.” He argues that tourism is a kind of resistance to the development of modernism, a failed attempt to subvert alienation which ultimately succeeds in confirming it; when modern peoples seek reality in other periods and cultures, they reaffirm the alienation from their own. He links tourism, especially international tourism and sightseeing, to the expansion of modernity and the “alienating” blurring of the lines between work and leisure. This is another foundational theoretical text that explores modernity and tourism in relation to one another and on which much of the contemporary discourse of tourism builds upon.
Nash, Roderick. Wilderness and the American Mind. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1967.
With the underlying assumption in mind that the wilderness is a basic ingredient of American civilization, Nash argues that the interaction of men and wilderness has profoundly affected the development of the country, and the formation of a national character, as well as the physical and ideological standing of the natural environment in the American mind. He examines the attitude of Americans toward wilderness and its paradoxical metaphors influenced by the changing ideologies and philosophies behind it. Nas demonstrates how the meaning of “wilderness” changed from a Biblical idea of “conquering this moral and physical wasteland” held by the by the early pioneers to the conscious preservation of ecosystems by environmentalists–often sparking debate. Nash neatly integrates the history of the environmentalist movement from its birth to its becoming an integral part of the role of the federal government, with tribute to the outstanding preservationists who made it possible. [Abstract by S. Vegh]*
Philpott, William. Vacationland: Tourism and Environment in the Colorado High Country. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2013.
This book details how following World War II, the Colorado High Country was transformed into a tourist landscape from a little visited remote area. It is a case study of how the consumerism of the post war year rearranged landscapes and revolutionized American environmental attitudes. This book brings together touristic consumerism, demographic shifts, and the human relationship with the specific type of nature constructed in Colorado and explores the development of environmental movements inspired by aesthetics.
Robison, Ken. Defending Idaho’s Natural Heritage. United States: Publisher not identified, 2014.
In this book, Robison documents the history of Idaho’s land management from early sportsman advocating for hunting to controversies over mining in pristine areas to failed national park bills. Robison’s mission is to recognize the efforts of Idahoan who worked for conservation and preservation of state lands and wildlife. This provides an excellent background on the management histories and controversies of wilderness and non-wilderness protected areas, including the Boulder-Whiteclouds region that recently became a wilderness area.
Rothman, Hal. “From Steamboat Springs to Sun Valley: Regionally and Nationally Marketed Skiing” in Devil’s Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth Century American West. (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1998), 197.
This chapter in Rothman’s book on tourism of the American West at large describes the transformation of the Wood River Valley in Idaho to the Sun Valley resort. From beginnings as a destination for the railroad industry and Easterners and Midwesterners who could afford train travel and winter sports, Rothman explores the demographic and economic transformations of Sun Valley which were reproduced in other blossoming ski towns across the snowy west. While this chapter provides important historical background of the specific region of Idaho, it also provides an early example of the phenomenon of rural gentrification.
Russell, Roslyn, Philippa Thomas, and Elizabeth Fredline. “Mountain Resorts in the Summer: Defining the Image” in Nature-Based Tourism in Peripheral Areas: Development or Disaster? Ed. C. Michael Hall and Stephen Boyd. Tonawanda: Channel View Publications, 2005. 75-90.
While many of the articles in the mountain section of this book are relevant, Russell et al’s chapter discusses specifically mountain ski resorts in the summer which rely on the creation of an image destination to market themselves to tourists. This article outlines the methodology of holistic image creation, includes survey results from visitors and non-visitors to resorts, and focuses primarily on the region of the Australian Alps.
Shaffer, Marguerite S. See America First: Tourism and National Identity, 1880-1940. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001
This book is a historical exploration into the self-tourism of Americans in America. Shaffer provides valuable historical background to the development of tourism, including national parks, road trip tourism. She asks how the tourist industry seeks to reconcile the mythology of America with the realities of the urban industrial nation state and delves deeply into the creation and commodification of landscape narrative.
Shepheard, Paul. The Cultivated Wilderness: Or, What Is Landscape? Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997.
Shepheard writes about seven landscapes, and includes with each a theme and a placement in his own hierarchy. The chapters are chronicled in the following descending order: (1) Wilderness—Switzerland, (2) Unity—The Seven Wonders of the World, (3) Hope—Antarctica, (4) Nation—Scotland, (5) Utility—Flevoland, (6) Vision—The London Basin, and (7) Memory—The Western Front. Shepheard defines the Wilderness as the world before the appearance or influence of humans. Cultivation is defined as everything humans have done since and Landscape is identified as the strategies that have governed what humans have done. It is Shepheard’s position that Landscape must be shown by example because it will not reduce to fundamentals or be triviaqlized. [Abstract by K. Mackall]*
Watt, Laura. “The Trouble with Preservation, or, Getting Back to the Wrong Term for Wilderness Protection: A Case Study at Point Reyes National Seashore.” Yearbook of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers 01/2002; 64(1). DOI: 10.1353/pcg.2002.0009
How “untrammeled” must a wilderness be at the time it is designated as such? Should the intent behind designating wilderness areas be to protect existing areas that meet the official definition, or to create new ones through management actions? This question is explored by looking at the historical evolution of the Philip Burton Wilderness Area in Point Reyes National Seashore, which gradually has been transformed from a dairy ranching landscape to an apparently pristine wilderness. In the process, the history of human habitation and use of the area has been downplayed or overlooked. This case raises questions about the interplay between considerations of ecological functioning, recreation demands, and simple aesthetics in defining managed wilderness. It also suggests that new terminology for wilderness protection that differentiates between varying degrees of previous human use could help to avoid the erasure of history from preserved natural areas.
* resource extracted from the an online annotated bibliography found here: http://www.amst.umd.edu/Research/cultland/index.html