2026-05-25T04:13:25Zhttps://keep.lib.asu.edu/oai/requestoai:keep.lib.asu.edu:node-1529272024-12-20T18:25:12Zoai_pmh:alloai_pmh:repo_items152927
https://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.I.25866
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
All Rights Reserved
2014
vii, 154 p. : ill. (some col.)
Doctoral Dissertation
Academic theses
Text
Globe (Ariz.)--History.
Globe (Ariz.)
Jerome (Ariz.)--History.
Jerome (Ariz.)
Oatman (Ariz.)--History.
Oatman (Ariz.)
Tombstone (Ariz.)--History.
Tombstone (Ariz.)
Communication
American Old West
Arizona tourism
historic photographs
Old Western town
Qualitative Research
Visual Methods
Tourists--Arizona--Public opinion.
Tourists
eng
McMullen, Melissa
Margolis, Eric
Martin, Judith
Rowe, Jeremy
Arizona State University
Partial requirement for: Ph. D., Arizona State University, 2014
Includes bibliographical references (p. 137-146)
Field of study: Communication
The history of the American Old West has frequently been romanticized and idealized. This dissertation study explored four Arizona towns that developed during the era of the American Old West: Tombstone, Jerome, Oatman, and Globe. The study broadly examined issues of remembering/forgetting and historical authenticity/myth. It specifically analyzed historic tourist destinations as visual phenomenon: seeking to understand how town histories were visually communicated to contemporary tourists and what role historically-grounded visual narratives played in the overall tourist experience. The study utilized a visual methodology to organize and structure qualitative data collection and analysis; it incorporated visual data from historic and contemporary photographs and textual data from observations and interviews. Through a careful exploration of each town's past and present, the research proposed a measure to assess how the strength of visual connections between past and present impacted tourist impressions of each town. The analysis suggested that, due to a general lack of historic knowledge, tourist impressions were more closely connected to contemporary experiences and prior expectations of the American Old West than to historically-grounded visual narratives.
Visual narratives of the Old West: how Arizona old western towns communicate history to contemporary tourists