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- Creators: Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 1756-1791
Description
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
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 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
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 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
Description
This dissertation begins with a simple question: By what process(es) have remote prehistoric ruins and natural wonders, particularly in the American Southwest, been transformed from interesting curiosities of the unknown frontier to American "national monuments"? If monuments, in their various forms, are understood as symbols of national and regional identities, then the National Park Service's (NPS) Flagstaff Area National Monuments (Walnut Canyon, Sunset Crater Volcano, and Wupatki) have been preserved for more than just their historic or scientific value. By tracing the story of these monuments from the era of European contact through the 1930s New Deal, when the NPS assumed full control, this dissertation explores the relationship between a community's sense of place or history and the creation - perhaps even invention or imagining - of some of America's first national monuments. I argue that there are three general cycles through which these sites progressed: periods of exploitation, ownership, and protection. In short, the possessive nature of natural and cultural resource exploitation (through early lumbering, ranching, pothunting, tourism, and the like) had the eventual effect of creating a sense of ownership of those resources, which, in turn, brought about the desire for their protection from exploitation and wholesale destruction. These shifts occurred as the people of Flagstaff developed a sense of place or history - a kind of intellectual ownership - through which Walnut Canyon, Wupatki, and Sunset Crater Volcano became an integral part of local, regional, and national identity. Each phase is therefore not mutually exclusive and changed only through the influence of external forces, like the federal government and the passage of legislation, but rather is part of a gradual process through which change is brought about on a number of levels - internal and external, local and national, individual and community-wide. The work that follows is based on a reading of the relevant literature in cultural resource management, as well as extensive research in period manuscript, newspaper, and photographic collections from Flagstaff to Washington, D.C.
ContributorsStoutamire, William F (Author) / Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Thesis advisor) / Pitcaithley, Dwight (Committee member) / Pyne, Stephen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
At the turn of the twenty-first century, the population of Surprise Arizona exploded, increasing from 31,000 to 100,000 in just eight years. Developers filled acres of former cotton fields and citrus groves with walled neighborhoods of stucco and tile-roofed homes surrounded by palm trees and oleander bushes. Priced for middle-class families and retirees, this planned and standardized landscape stood in stark contrast to that of the town's first decades when dirt roads served migrant farm labor families living in makeshift homes with outdoor privies. This study explores how a community with an identity based on farm labor and networks of kinship and friendship evolved into an icon of the twenty-first century housing boom. This analysis relies on evidence from multiple sources. A community history initiative, the Surprise History Project, produced photographs, documents, and oral histories. City records, newspaper accounts, county documents, and census reports offer further insight into the external and internal factors that shaped and reshaped the meaning of community in Surprise. A socially and politically constructed concept, community identity evolves in response to the intricate interplay of contingencies, external forces, and the actions and decisions of civic leaders and residents. In the case of Surprise, this complex mix of factors also set the foundation for its emergence as a twenty-first century boomburb. The rapid expansion of the Phoenix metropolitan area, the emergence of age-restricted communities, and federal programs reset the social, economic, and political algorithms of the community. Internally, changing demographics, racial and ethnic diversity, and an ever-expanding population produced differing and continuously evolving ideas about community identity, a matter of intense importance to many. For seven decades, Surprise residents with competing ideas about place came into conflict. Concurrently, these individuals participated in official and vernacular events, activities, and celebrations. These gatherings, which evolved as the town grew and changed, also shaped community identity. While attending the Fourth of July festivities or debating city leaders' decisions at town council meetings, Surprise residents defined and redefined their community.
ContributorsPalmer, Carol S (Author) / Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Thesis advisor) / Gullett, Gayle (Committee member) / Vandermeer, Philip (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This dissertation explores how the written word and natural and cultural landscapes entwine to create a place, the process by which Arizona's landscapes affected narratives written about the place and how those narratives created representations of Arizona over time. From before Arizona became a state in 1912 to the day its citizens celebrated one hundred years as a state in 2012, words have played a role in making it the place it is. The literature about Arizona and narratives drawn from its landscapes reveal writers' perceptions, what they believe is important and useful, what motivates or attracts them to the place. Those perceptions translated into words organized in various ways create an image of Arizona for readers. I explore written works taken at twenty-five year intervals--1912 and subsequent twenty-five year anniversaries--synthesizing narratives about Arizona and examining how those representations of the place changed (or did not change). To capture one hundred years of published material, I chose sources from several genres including official state publications, newspapers, novels, poetry, autobiography, journals, federal publications, and the Arizona Highways magazine. I chose sources that would have been available to the reading public, publications that demonstrated a wide readership. In examining the words about Arizona that have been readily available to the English-reading public, the importance of the power of the printed word becomes clear. Arizona became the place it is in the twenty-first century, in part, because people with power--in the federal and state governments, boosters, and business leaders--wrote about it in such a way as to influence growth and tourism sometimes at the expense of minority groups and the environment. Minority groups' narratives in their own words were absent from Arizona's written narrative landscape until the second half of the twentieth century when they began publishing their own stories. The narratives about Arizona changed over time, from literature dominated by boosting and promotion to a body of literature with many layers, many voices. Women, Native American, and Hispanic narratives, and environmentalists' and boosters' words created a more complex representation of Arizona in the twenty-first century, and more accurately reflected its cultural landscape, than the Arizona represented in earlier narratives.
ContributorsEngel-Pearson, Kimberli (Author) / Pyne, Stephen (Thesis advisor) / Hirt, Paul (Thesis advisor) / Adamson, Joni (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Civic leadership in Phoenix, Arizona promoted the city's performing arts as part of a deliberate plan towards the larger growth agenda after World War II. From the 1940s through the late 1960s, the business and professional leaders who controlled city government served on boards for performing arts groups, built venues, offered financial support, and sometimes participated as artists in order to attract high-technology firms and highly skilled workers to the area. They believed one aspect of Phoenix's urban development included a need for quality, high-culture performing arts scene that signaled a high quality of life and drew more residents. After this era of boosterism ended and control shifted from business and professional leaders to city government, performing arts support fluctuated with leadership's attitudes and the local, state, and national economies. The early civic leaders were successful in their overall mission to expand the city - now the sixth largest in the nation - and many of the organizations and venues they patronized still serve the community; however, the commitment to developing a quality arts and culture scene waned. Today's public, private, and arts and culture leaders are using the same argument as Phoenix tries once again to become a high-technology center. The theory that arts and culture stimulate the economy directly and indirectly is true today as it was in the 1940s. Although the plan was effective, it needed fully committed supporters, strong infrastructure, and continued revising in order to move the vision into the twenty-first century.
ContributorsBickert, Michelle (Author) / Vandermeer, Phiip (Thesis advisor) / Dallett, Nancy (Committee member) / Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
ContributorsMozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 1756-1791 (Composer)
Description
This dissertation is a cultural history of the frontier stories surrounding an Arizona politician and Indian trader, John Lorenzo Hubbell. From 1878 to 1930, Hubbell operated a trading post in Ganado, Arizona--what is today Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site. During that time, he played host to hundreds of visitors who trekked into Navajo country in search of scientific knowledge and artistic inspiration as the nation struggled to come to terms with industrialization, immigration, and other modern upheavals. Hubbell became an important mediator between the Native Americans and the Anglos who came to study them, a facilitator of the creation of the Southwestern myth. He lavished hospitality upon some of the Southwest's principle myth-makers, regaling them with stories of his younger days in the Southwest, which his guests remembered and shared face-to-face and in print, from novels to booster literature. By applying place theory to Hubbell's stories, and by placing them in the context of the history of tourism in the Southwest, I explore the relationship between those stories, the visitors who heard and retold them, and the process of place- and myth-making in the Southwest. I argue that the stories operated on two levels. First, they became a kind of folklore for Hubbell's visitors, a cycle of stories that expressed their ties to and understanding of the Navajo landscape and bound them together as a group, despite the fact that they must inevitably leave Navajo country. Second, the stories fit into the broader myth- and image-making processes that transformed the Southwest into a distinctive region in the imaginations of Americans. Based on a close reading of the stories and supporting archival research, I analyze four facets of the Hubbell legend: the courteous Spanish host; the savior of Native American arts and crafts; the fearless conqueror and selfless benefactor of the Navajos; and the thoroughly Western lawman. Each incarnation of the Hubbell legend spoke to travelers' relationships with Navajo country and the Southwest in different ways. I argue, however, that after Hubbell's death, the connection between his stories and travelers' sense of place weakened dramatically.
ContributorsCottam, Erica, 1985- (Author) / Pyne, Stephen (Thesis advisor) / Szuter, Christine (Committee member) / Osburn, Katherine (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This thesis examines the immediate post-World War II operational strategy of Valley National Bank of Arizona, a Phoenix-based institution in operation from 1899 until its 1992 acquisition by Ohio-based Banc One Corporation (now JPMorgan Chase). For the purposes of this study, the immediate post-war period is defined as 1944 to January 20, 1953, a span that opens with the bank's wartime planning efforts for the post-war period and ends with the 1953 retirement of bank president Walter Bimson. By the end of World War II, Valley National ranked as the largest financial institution in the eight-state Rocky Mountain region, as measured by total deposits. However, post-war regulatory issues, competitor expansion, and an inability to generate deposit volume sufficient to meet subject period loan demands challenged bank leaders seeking to maintain market share and grow company profitability and stock value. In response to these difficulties, the bank focused on a three-pronged operational strategy emphasizing advertising, market-appropriate deposit and loan product offerings, and an aggressive branching and acquisition campaign. This strategy did not result in unmitigated success as the bank did experience a decrease in average deposit account balances, lost mortgage market share, and undertook acquisition activity that later resulted in federal antitrust action. However, by the end of the subject period, the three-pronged strategy employed by the bank did result in an increase in deposit dollar market share, as measured by deposits controlled directly and indirectly by the institution, rising annual net profits, and substantial share price appreciation. The findings related to bank strategy and results presented in this thesis are based primarily upon information found in the 169-box Valley National Bank Collection housed at the Arizona Historical Society. Extensive newspaper research conducted using targeted date range and keyword searches and careful consideration of secondary source materials relating to the bank, the banking industry, and state, regional, and national politics, economics, and culture during the subject period provided additional information used in this study, and corroborated much of the material found in the Valley National Bank Collection files.
ContributorsSouthard, John (Author) / Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Thesis advisor) / Vandermeer, Philip (Committee member) / Gammage, Jr., Grady (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011