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Baseball is the quintessential American game. To understand the country one must also understand the role baseball played in the nation's maturation process. Embedded in baseball's history are (among other things) the stories of America's struggles with issues of race, gender, immigration, organized labor, drug abuse, and rampant consumerism. Over

Baseball is the quintessential American game. To understand the country one must also understand the role baseball played in the nation's maturation process. Embedded in baseball's history are (among other things) the stories of America's struggles with issues of race, gender, immigration, organized labor, drug abuse, and rampant consumerism. Over the better part of two centuries, the national pastime both reflected changes to American culture and helped shape them as well. Documenting these changes and packaging them for consumption is the responsibility of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Founded as a tourist attraction promoting largely patriotic values, in recent decades the Baseball Hall of Fame made a concerted effort to transform itself into a respected member of the history museum community--dedicated to displaying American history through the lens of baseball. This dissertation explores the evolution of the Baseball Hall of Fame from celebratory shrine to history museum through an analysis of public history practice within the museum. In particular, this study examines the ways the Hall both reflected and reinforced changes to American values and ideologies through the evolution of public history practice in the museum. The primary focus of this study is the museum's exhibits and analyzing what their content and presentation convey about the social climate during the various stages of the Baseball Hall of Fame's evolution. The principal resources utilized to identify these stages include promotional materials, exhibit reviews, periodicals, and photographic records, as well as interviews with past and present Hall-of-Fame staff. What this research uncovers is the story of an institution in the midst of a slow transition. Throughout the past half century, the Hall of Fame staff struggled with a variety of obstacles to change (including the museum's traditionally conservative roots, the unquestioning devotion Americans display for baseball and its mythology, and the Hall of Fame's idyllic setting in a quaint corner of small-town America) that undermined their efforts to become the type of socially relevant institution many envisioned. Contending with these challenges continues to characterize much of the museum's operations today.
ContributorsMangan, Gregory (Author) / Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Thesis advisor) / Szuter, Christine (Committee member) / Toon, Richard (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
Museums reflect power relations in society. Centuries of tradition dictate that museum professionals through years of study have more knowledge about the past and culture than the communities they present and serve. As mausoleums of intellect, museums developed cultures that are resistant to relinquishing any authority to the public. The

Museums reflect power relations in society. Centuries of tradition dictate that museum professionals through years of study have more knowledge about the past and culture than the communities they present and serve. As mausoleums of intellect, museums developed cultures that are resistant to relinquishing any authority to the public. The long history of museums as the authority over the past led to the alienation and exclusion of many groups from museums, particular indigenous communities. Since the 1970s, many Native groups across the United States established their own museums in response to the exclusion of their voices in mainstream institutions. As establishments preserving cultural material, tradition, and history, tribal museums are recreating the meaning of "museum," presenting a model of cooperation and inclusion of community members to the museum process unprecedented in other institutions. In a changing world, many scholars and professionals call for a sharing of authority in museum spaces in order to engage the pubic in new ways, yet many cultural institutions s struggle to find a way to negotiate the traditional model of a museum while working with communities. Conversely, the practice of power sharing present in Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) tradition shaped a museum culture capable of collaboration with their community. Focusing on the Akwesasne Museum as a case study, this dissertation argues that the ability for a museum to share authority of the past with its community is dependent on the history and framework of the culture of the institution, its recognition of the importance of place to informing the museum, and the use of cultural symbols to encourage collaboration. At its core, this dissertation concerns issues of authority, power, and ownership over the past in museum spaces.
ContributorsHeisinger, Meaghan (Author) / Fixico, Donald (Thesis advisor) / Szuter, Christine (Committee member) / Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
The Kootenai River landscape of southwestern British Columbia, northwestern Montana and the very northern tip of Idaho helped unify the indigenous Ktunaxa tribe and guided tribal lifestyles for centuries. However, the Ktunaxa bands' intimate connection with the river underwent a radical transformation during the nineteenth century. This study analyzes how

The Kootenai River landscape of southwestern British Columbia, northwestern Montana and the very northern tip of Idaho helped unify the indigenous Ktunaxa tribe and guided tribal lifestyles for centuries. However, the Ktunaxa bands' intimate connection with the river underwent a radical transformation during the nineteenth century. This study analyzes how the Ktunaxa relationship with the Kootenai River faced challenges presented by a new understanding of the meaning of landscape introduced by outside groups who began to ply the river's waters in the early 1800s. As the decades passed, the establishment of novel boundaries, including the new U.S.-Canadian border and reserve/reservation delineations, forever altered Ktunaxa interaction with the land. The very meaning of the river for the Ktunaxa as a source of subsistence, avenue of transportation and foundation of spiritual identity experienced similar modifications. In a matter of decades, authoritarian lines on foreign maps imposed a concept of landscape far removed from the tribe's relatively fluid and shifting understanding of boundary lines represented by the river at the heart of the Ktunaxa homeland. This thesis draws on early ethnographic work with the Ktunaxa tribe in addition to the journals of early traders and missionaries in the Kootenai region to describe how the Ktunaxa way of life transformed during the nineteenth century. The works of anthropologist Keith Basso and environmental philosopher David Abram are used to develop an understanding of the powerful implications of the separation of the Ktunaxa people from the landscape so essential to tribal identity and lifestyle. Two different understandings of boundaries and the human relationship with the natural world clashed along the Kootenai River in the 1800s, eventually leading to the separation of the valley's indigenous inhabitants from each other and from the land itself. What water had once connected, lines on maps now divided, redefining this extensive landscape and its meaning for the Ktunaxa people. However, throughout decades of dominance of the Western mapmakers' worldview and in spite of the overwhelming influence of this Euro-American approach to the environment, members of the Ktunaxa tribe have been able to maintain much of their traditional culture.
ContributorsColeman, Robert (Author) / Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Thesis advisor) / Szuter, Christine (Committee member) / Fixico, Donald (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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This thesis explores the implications that the outcome of a certain U.S. lawsuit involving antiquities could have on practices and programs in the United States, related to cultural heritage and history. This paper examines the Rubin et al case, which sought to attach a collection of ancient Persian artifacts (known

This thesis explores the implications that the outcome of a certain U.S. lawsuit involving antiquities could have on practices and programs in the United States, related to cultural heritage and history. This paper examines the Rubin et al case, which sought to attach a collection of ancient Persian artifacts (known as The Persepolis Tablets) as a source of legal compensation. Presented as a case study, and using primary and secondary research sources, this paper analyzes the Rubin et al lawsuit and the factors that led to its initiation, and seeks to determine how and why adverse consequences could result from its final ruling. This thesis demonstrates that the final decision in the lawsuit could leave a negative impact on a number of practices related to cultural heritage in the United States, especially with regards to cultural and academic institutions such as museums and universities.
ContributorsAhouraiyan, Taraneh (Author) / Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Thesis advisor) / Warrren-Findley, Jannelle (Committee member) / Thompson, Victoria (Committee member) / Smith, Louis (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
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Description
Historians often characterize first ladies in the Progressive Era as representatives of the last vestiges of Victorian womanhood in an increasingly modern society. This dissertation argues that first ladies negotiated an image of themselves that fulfilled both traditional and modern notions of womanhood. In crafting these images, first ladies constructed

Historians often characterize first ladies in the Progressive Era as representatives of the last vestiges of Victorian womanhood in an increasingly modern society. This dissertation argues that first ladies negotiated an image of themselves that fulfilled both traditional and modern notions of womanhood. In crafting these images, first ladies constructed images of their celebrity selves that were uniquely modern. Thus, images of first ladies in the Progressive Era show them as modest and feminine but also autonomous, intelligent, and capable. Using the historian Charles Ponce de Leon's research on modern human-interest journalism, I contend that first ladies in the Progressive Era worked with the modern press in a symbiotic relationship. This relationship allowed the press exclusive access to what was, ostensibly, the first lady's private, and therefore authentic, self. By purporting to reveal parts of their private lives in the press, first ladies showed themselves as down-to-earth despite their success and fulfilled by their domestic pursuits despite their compelling public lives. By offering the press exclusive access to their lives, first ladies secured the opportunity to shape specific images of themselves to appeal, as broadly as possible, to their husbands and parties' constituents and the American public. First ladies in the Progressive Era thus acted as political figures by using both public and private, or what historian Catherine Allgor terms, "unofficial spaces" to support and reflect their husbands and parties' political agendas. In examining representations of first ladies in popular magazines and newspapers from 1901 to 1921 in tandem with letters, memoirs, and other personal papers from these women, a clear pattern emerges. Despite personal differences, first ladies in the Progressive Era represented themselves according to a specific formula in the modern press. The images, constructed by first ladies in this time period, reflect shifts in economic, social, and political life in Progressive Era America, which called for women to be independent and intelligent yet still maintain their femininity and domesticity.
ContributorsHorohoe, Jill (Author) / Gullett, Gayle (Thesis advisor) / Longley, Rodney K (Committee member) / Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
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Description
The Victorian era was the age of museum development in the United States. In the wake of these institutions, another important figure of the nineteenth century emerged--the flâneur. The flâneur represents the city, and provided new mechanisms of seeing to the public. The flâneur taught citizens how to gaze with

The Victorian era was the age of museum development in the United States. In the wake of these institutions, another important figure of the nineteenth century emerged--the flâneur. The flâneur represents the city, and provided new mechanisms of seeing to the public. The flâneur taught citizens how to gaze with a panoptic eye. The increasing importance of cultural institutions contributed to a new means of presenting power and interacting with the viewing public. Tony Bennett's exhibitionary complex theory, argues that nineteenth-century museums were institutions of power that educated, civilized, and through surveillance, encourage self-regulation of crowds. The flâneur's presence in the nineteenth century informed the public about modes of seeing and self-regulation--which in turn helped establish Bennett's theory inside the museum. The popular writing and literature of the time provides an opportunity to examine the extent of the exhibitionary complex and the flâneur. One of the most prominent nineteenth-century authors, Henry James, not only utilizes museums in his work, but he often uses them in just the manner Bennett puts forth in his theory. This is significant because the ideas about museums in James's work shaped the minds of an expanding literary public in the United States, and further educated, civilized, and regulated readers. James also represents the flâneur in his writing, which speaks to broader cultural implications of the both exhibitionary complex on the outside world, and the effects of broader cultural influences on the museum. Beyond the impact of James's work, in the late nineteenth century American culture increasingly became centered around the printed word. The central position of books in American culture at the end of the nineteenth century allowed books and libraries to appropriate the exhibitionary complex and become tools of power in their own right. The book and the library relate to the museum as part of a larger cultural environment, which emerged as a result of modernity and a response to the ever-changing nineteenth-century world.  
ContributorsHarrison, Leah Gibbons (Author) / Szuter, Christine (Thesis advisor) / Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Committee member) / Toon, Richard (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
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Description
Since the initial impetus to collect, preserve, and interpret history with the intent of safeguarding American heritage for posterity, historical societies have made substantial contributions to the preservation of historical records. Historical societies have tended to originate in socially exclusive groups and found history museums, celebratory in nature. In contemporary

Since the initial impetus to collect, preserve, and interpret history with the intent of safeguarding American heritage for posterity, historical societies have made substantial contributions to the preservation of historical records. Historical societies have tended to originate in socially exclusive groups and found history museums, celebratory in nature. In contemporary society, this exclusivity raises issues and concerns for contemporary institutions seeking to "serve the public." Tempe History Museum, Chandler Museum, and Scottsdale Historical Museum are examples of local history museums, initially formed by historical societies, which are currently at different stages of developing exhibits and collections more representative of their diverse communities. The three museums have different approaches to not only defining their local community but also to what it means to serve and represent their city by being the local history museum. In recent years, the Tempe History Museum has undergone a renovation of its facility and exhibits, the Chandler Museum is in the midst of transferring its collection to the City of Chandler and planning for a new facility, and the Scottsdale Historical Museum has remained largely the same since the early 1990s. The decisions made by the historical societies that found these museums have shaped and directed the museums' paths to becoming, or failing to become, relevant to their local communities. The Tempe, Chandler, and Scottsdale historical societies came from the Anglo-community within each city, so did the collections they acquired and the objects they displayed. At a time of rising social history, the historical societies presented socially exclusive museums. Becoming incorporated within the city government, would prove to be the point of change, the tipping point when the history museums moved from particularism to pluralism. The change, however, did not come overnight. It was change over time. The city governments had an obligation to equally represent its taxpayers and constituency, meaning that the newly incorporated museums had to eventually follow the same mission. In the case of Tempe, Chandler, and Scottsdale museums, incorporation within city governments has led to a stable funding source, professional staff, and a move towards representation of diverse communities within museum exhibits and programming.
ContributorsMilinic, Adriana (Author) / Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Thesis advisor) / Toon, Richard (Committee member) / Vandermeer, Philip (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
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Description
During the 1850s, Indian policy objectives pursued by the civil and military branches of government in New Mexico would have a lasting impact on future relations between the two cultures. Many later policies originated in this antebellum period, but often receive only a summary analysis by scholars who focus on

During the 1850s, Indian policy objectives pursued by the civil and military branches of government in New Mexico would have a lasting impact on future relations between the two cultures. Many later policies originated in this antebellum period, but often receive only a summary analysis by scholars who focus on the more popular post-Civil War period. Debates over proper policies and enforcement would proliferate in the 1850s as military and civil officials vied with one another over their own perceived authority. Many officials pursued viable policies, but did not remain in office long enough to ensure their implementation. Additionally, personal egos and stubbornness often undermined interagency cooperation. An overall cultural misunderstanding regarding Apache tribal structure and the inability to distinguish between subgroups exacerbated the conflict. Anti-Indian sentiments prevailed in the military, which often contradicted the more humanitarian approach advocated by the Indian Department. As a result, a contention for power and prestige emerged on three separate fronts: civil government leaders, military leaders, and within the Apache tribe. This thesis offers a contextualization of events that transpired during the 1870s and 1880s by demonstrating how these three entities contended amongst each other for power, undermining policy objectives in the antebellum era. Americans sought to conquer and control--to exert authority and power--over all components of the western landscape in order that they might realize its full economic potential. The Apaches formed a part of this landscape much the same as lofty mountain ranges, raging rivers, and parched deserts. All of these required conquering before that nineteenth century American dream could be fully imbued in the Southwest, and over the several decades following Kearny's arrival countless individuals streamed westward in torrents intent on accomplishing just that. The Apaches, like all western tribes, thus fell into an unstoppable cycle of conquest driven by an insatiable Anglo-American obsession with exerting control. Just as swarthy lawyers challenged claims to gain legal dominion over western tracts of land; just as engineers constructed dams and sought ways to manipulate streams and rivers; just as the plow tilled millions of acres of raw lands; just as the miner's pick slowly chipped away at formidable peaks; so too did the United States Army subdue the Apaches, all of these being a means towards a common end for the American West.
ContributorsKiser, William S., 1986- (Author) / Fixico, Donald L. (Thesis advisor) / Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Committee member) / Szuter, Christine (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
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The Maricopa produce one of the most recognizable types of pottery made in Arizona. Since the late nineteenth century, the ware has been manufactured for sale, and a small number of individuals continue to produce the pottery today. Over the past forty years, the amount of pottery in museum and

The Maricopa produce one of the most recognizable types of pottery made in Arizona. Since the late nineteenth century, the ware has been manufactured for sale, and a small number of individuals continue to produce the pottery today. Over the past forty years, the amount of pottery in museum and private collections has increased dramatically. Studying these new collections changes the way in which developments in the pottery are understood. Previous scholarship identified three phases of development, including a pottery revival in the late 1930s during which the involvement of government and museum personnel resulted in the improvement of the ware and a change in style. An analysis of expanded pottery collections shows that this period was not a revival, but rather part of a more gradual continuum. Hindsight shows that the activities of the 1930s served to publicize Maricopa potters, resulting in an increasingly collectible pottery. One collector, Adele Cheatham of Laveen, Arizona, compiled a collection that helps to shed light on developments in the 1960s and 1970s demonstrating that there were relationships between the potters' community and residents of Laveen. This indicates that for women in these settlements the manufacture and sale of Maricopa pottery was a common interest and created deeper bonds, some of which developed into close friendships. The eight different potters represented in the Cheatham Collection highlight a shift in generations within the potter community, showing the importance of teaching and family relationships in transmitting the knowledge of the craft to the next generation. These relationships have continued to change as the number of potters has dwindled, and instruction of the craft has transitioned from one that was learned in a home setting to one that is increasingly introduced in a classroom. At the same time, this historically female associated craft has shifted to one where men are actively producing pottery. Changes in teaching style, the people producing the pottery and decorative techniques indicate that Maricopa pottery is an art in transition.
ContributorsVogel, Lindsey Lianne (Author) / Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Thesis advisor) / Dallett, Nancy (Committee member) / Simon, Arelyn (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2010