This dissertation argues that the strong relationship that historians see between the South and West in the early 19th century, which allowed them to form what scholars have termed the Old South, had its origins in the twenty-year period after the American Revolution when a group of far-sighted southerners worked to form a political bond between the two regions. They did so by tirelessly defending the West and westerners against political and economic attacks, often from northerners but sometimes from people within their own region. Within the ongoing debate over the emergence of a southern consciousness, historians have overlooked one important factor in its development-the West. Although it would be incorrect to argue that southern consciousness began in the 1780s or 1790s, it would not be remiss to argue that southerners began to look at the trans-Appalachian West during this period as something more than just virgin territory. A few southerners, particularly James Madison, saw the South's political future entwined with the West's advancement and worked to ensure that a strong political relationship developed between the two regions. For people like Madison, this political merger of the two sections is what they meant when they talked about a "southern and western interest." Historians should be careful not to take the close relationship present in the nineteenth century between the South and the trans-Appalachian West for granted. Although the two regions shared many interests, family and slavery being just two, the close relationship that developed happened because of the hard work and dedication of a handful of forward-looking southerners in the late eighteenth century. The history of these two regions during this twenty-year period is far more complicated than historians have imagined and described.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Geography / Kevin Blake / Jeffrey S. Smith / Hollywood Westerns have informed popular images of the American West for well over a century. This study of cultural, cinematic, regional, and historical geography examines place imagery in the Western. Echoing Blake’s (1995) examination of the novels of Zane Grey, the research questions analyze one hundred major Westerns to identify (1) the spatial settings (where the plot of the Western transpires), (2) the temporal settings (what date[s] in history the Western takes place), and (3) the filming locations. The results of these three questions illuminate significant place images of the West and the geography of the Western. I selected a filmography of one hundred major Westerns based upon twenty different Western film credentials. My content analysis involved multiple viewings of each Western and cross-referencing film content like narrative titles, American Indian homelands, fort names, and tombstone dates with scholarly and popular publications. The Western spatially favors Apachería, the Borderlands and Mexico, and the High Plains rather than the Pacific Northwest. Also, California serves more as a destination than a spatial setting. Temporally, the heart of the Western beats during the 1870s and 1880s, but it also lives well into the twentieth century. The five major filming location clusters are the Los Angeles / Hollywood area and its studio backlots, Old Tucson Studios and southeastern Arizona, the Alabama Hills in California, Monument Valley in Utah and Arizona, and the Santa Fe region in New Mexico. The filming locations spotlight majestic mountain backgrounds, impressive rock formations, dangerous deserts, sweeping plains, and place-less urban backlots. The quintessential Western is spatially set in southeastern Arizona in the 1880s and is filmed in Monument Valley. Utilizing Meinig’s (1965) Core-Domain-Sphere concept, the genre’s place-image core resides in southeastern Arizona. The Western domain includes the Borderlands, High Plains, Sierra Nevada, Slickrock Country, and central New Mexico. The sphere of Western imagery extends outward to Los Angeles, Dodge City, Mexico, Canada, and Spain. Following Wright (2014), the Western’s typical boundaries are the Missouri Breaks (north), Indian Territory (east), the Borderlands (south) and gold mining in the Sierra Nevada (west).

This thesis examines the social, political, and economic underpinnings of creating a place for Basque immigrant descendants by the use of the Basque Block in downtown Boise, Idaho. In the past, unlike other immigrant groups in the United States, Basques lacked the desire to assimilate into the US and remained relatively invisible. Simultaneously, they created subtle ethnic communities and maintained transnational sociospatial ties with Basque Provinces in Europe. Today, these transnational ties are stronger, which has profoundly influenced the creation of the Basque Block. The Basques strive to maintain their heritage landscapes to retain their cultural identity and educate present and future generations about their unique legacy. Furthermore, the local community in Boise has recently marketed their heritage landscapes to attract tourists and bring attention to this "invisible" ethnic group. This thesis explores the challenges and opportunities brought on by the production and commodification of an ethnic heritage site.

No description available.

This collection of essays intends to draw out the complex relationship between structure and identity in the American West. Specifically, this collection considers the inherent connection between Mormon meetinghouses and the Salt Lake City Downtown Rising project completed in 2012, and both Mormons and non-Mormons who choose to establish a home and an identity in the West. Although the obvious addressees are Mormon and non-Mormon, the applicable audience is far-reaching in that the identity of a specific region established primarily by one faction of people is, much like all things, subject to change. This change and this identity crisis resemble the worn façade of an aged structure. With time, a new identity emerges and from it a new understanding of time and place is engendered. This project was funded by curiosity and a restless mind. The societal benefits, like any piece of literature, are incalculable.

In this project, I explore how Sam Shepard and Martin McDonagh treat concepts of space (both on stage and within a larger context that expands beyond the theatre), and I seek to identify how underlying anxieties about a mythologized past become manifest in the relationships between characters and landscapes by examining heterotopic and liminal elements in their scripts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Minnesota, 1969. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 175-188).

American emigrants frequently encountered Native North Americans during the overland trail migrations of the 1840s-1860s. This study examines the frequency and nature of those interactions in two geographic sections: the first half of the trail, from the Missouri River to the eastern slope of the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains, and the second half, from the western slope of South Pass to Oregon City, Oregon. While the predominant historiography of these migrations has focused on a binary of hostile or non-hostile interactions between Indians and emigrants, the focus on violence has obscured the larger issue of frequent and amicable interactions between emigrants and Indian peoples along the overland route. Factors such as trade, the availability of resources, and cultural differences influenced the nature of these inter-ethnic interactions, which varied from the beginning of the trail on the Plains to the end of the trail on the Columbia Plateau.

This case study examines the relationship between agriculture and urbanization in the context of Oregon's comprehensive land use planning system. The first article assesses the historical relationship between rural real estate development and investment in agriculture in Jackson County southern Oregon. The second article uses the theory of global urbanization to reflect on the patterns of urbanization in Jackson County and suggests that global urbanization might provide a useful framework for connecting urban political ecology and exurban political ecology. The third article focuses on the political economies of farmland preservation in Jackson County where there have been repeated calls for increased local control of land use planning. / 2016-09-29

abstract: This dissertation analyzes two regional systems of involuntary servitude (Indian captive slavery and Mexican debt peonage) over a period spanning roughly two centuries. Following a chronological framework, it examines the development of captive slavery in the Southwest beginning in the early 1700s and lasting through the mid-1800s, by which time debt peonage emerged as a secondary form of coerced servitude that augmented Indian slavery in order to meet increasing demand for labor. While both peonage and captive slavery had an indelible impact on cultural and social systems in the Southwest, this dissertation places those two labor systems within the context of North American slavery and sectional agitation during the antebellum period. The existence of debt bondage and Indian captivity in New Mexico had a significant impact on America's judicial and political institutions during the Reconstruction era. Debt peonage and Indian slavery had a lasting influence on American politics during the period 1846 to 1867, forcing lawmakers to acknowledge the fact that slavery existed in many forms. Following the Civil War, legislators realized that the Thirteenth Amendment did not cast a wide enough net, because peonage and captive slavery were represented as voluntary in nature and remained commonplace throughout New Mexico. When Congress passed a measure in 1867 explicitly outlawing peonage and captive slavery in New Mexico, they implicitly acknowledged the shortcomings of the Thirteenth Amendment. The preexistence of peonage and Indian slavery in the Southwest inculcated a broader understanding of involuntary labor in post-Civil War America and helped to expand political and judicial philosophy regarding free labor. These two systems played a crucial role in America's transition from free to unfree labor in the mid-1800s and contributed to the judicial and political frameworks that undermined slavery. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation History 2016