Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Mythic Frontiers
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
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COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://news.uafs.edu/public-information/speakers-bureau/daniel-maher * http://www.journalstandard.com/news/20170508/professor-from-lena-recognized-with-award
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2015149646
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2015149646
HEADING: Maher, Daniel R.
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100 1_ |a Maher, Daniel R.
670 __ |a Maher, Daniel R. Mythic frontiers, 2016: |b title page (Daniel R. Maher)
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Graduated from Illinois State University.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Anthropologist and academic. University of Arkansas, Fort Smith, Fort Smith, AR, on faculty, 1997–, became associate professor of sociology and anthropology. Has also taught for five years in the St. Louis metro area.
AWARDS:Research, Scholarship and Creative Activities Award, University of Arkansas, Fort Smith, 2017.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Daniel R. Maher is an anthropologist and academic. After studying at Illinois State University, he taught for five years in the St. Louis metro area. Maher joined the faculty at the University of Arkansas Fort Smith in 1997, where he is an associate professor of sociology and anthropology. Maher’s academic research interests include cultural heritage tourism, race theory, gender, social stratification, and constructs of the frontier.
Maher published Mythic Frontiers: Remembering, Forgetting, and Profiting with Cultural Heritage Tourism in 2016. With a foreword by Paul A. Shackel, the book looks at how cultural heritage is conceived and how it is manufactured. Maher labels “the frontier complex” a situation where culture and capital and tied to myth. Using case studies at heritage sites around Fort Smith, Arkansas, Maher separates history and heritage, showing what forces have had a hand at shaping how history is manufactured for tourists and how it is recast in its application for local or regional identity. Maher illustrates the way tourist sites employ popular interpretations for their intended audiences and how this aids in the perception of the site.
In a review in the Journal of American Folklore, A. Dana Weber claimed that Maher’s “in-depth engagement with the research location explains at least in part his access to historical sources and his sophistication in analyzing them.” Weber insisted that “overall, Maher’s book is an impressive study of a phenomenon with wide ramifications: the imaginary frontier that brackets inconvenient truths such as juridical corruption and racial and gender oppression in the service of establishing as facts the narratives of white hegemonic domination, and profits financially from these narratives,” adding that “although the core parameters of the study (wanting historical accuracy, uncovering racial and gender inequalities) are somewhat to be expected in the context of anthropological, ethnological, folklore, or culture studies research, Maher succeeds in bringing forth a powerful and persuasive analysis that underscores the necessity of conducting academic research precisely along these lines.” Weber pointed out that Mythic Frontiers “warns of the dangers of reformulating frontier history into ‘mythic’ tales that carry forth historical inaccuracies and varieties of power inequality. Well researched, densely written, and significant, this analytical study has the potential to make an impact beyond the academic audiences that will likely be sympathetic to its claims. One can only wish for makers and consumers of frontier heritage tourism to also take Mythic Frontiers to heart.”
Reviewing the book in the Journal of Southern History, Richard Megraw stated: “Probing Fort Smith’s “frontier complex” through three years of fieldwork, Maher exposes enough false fronts to fill several Hollywood back lots and shows how the town’s lived history bore little resemblance to the heritage local boosters promote.” Megraw acknowledged that historians would not be surprised by these findings. However, Megraw conceded that “Maher’s work contributes meaningfully to the ongoing discussion of how Americans display and consume their complicated past.” Writing in Choice, C.R. King observed that “Maher nicely teases out the ways in which restagings of the mythic frontier encourage partial recollections and overt erasures.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice, November 1, 2016, C.R. King, review of Mythic Frontiers: Remembering, Forgetting, and Profiting with Cultural Heritage Tourism, p. 439.
Journal of American Folklore, September 22, 2017, A. Dana Weber, review of Mythic Frontiers, p. 480.
Journal of Southern History, August 1, 2017, Richard Megraw, review of Mythic Frontiers, p. 671.
Journal Standard (Freeport, IL), May 8, 2017, “Professor from Lena Recognized with Award.”
ONLINE
University of Arkansas Fort Smith Website, http://www.uafs.edu/ (January 3, 2018), author profile.
Daniel Maher
Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology
Daniel Maher has taught cultural anthropology and sociology since 1990. He attended graduate school at Illinois State University in Normal, Ill., and taught for five years in the St. Louis metro area. He joined the faculty here in 1997.
Since arriving in Fort Smith, he has been the recipient of the Mayor's Multicultural Award, the Lucille Speakman Excellence in Teaching Award and the honors organization's Mentor of the Year Award. In addition to teaching for UAFS, he has also been the director of the Fort Smith Multicultural Center.
Topics
Mythic Wild West Frontiers
Popular concepts of the Wild West are inaccurate representations of the historical west. This presentation will detail how the “Wild West” came to be constructed in the United States and why it persists.
Fort Smith: A Bicentennial of Mythic Frontier Imaginary
Contrary to popular sentiment, Fort Smith was not located here in 1817 to “keep the peace between the Indians.” This presentation will detail how Fort Smith was used as a tool for manifest destiny and economic privilege.
Judge Isaac C. Parker, the United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas, and the Use of Power in the Frontier Heritage Imaginary
Little is known about the person Isaac Parker and what is popularly discussed belongs to the domain of myth. This presentation will provide essential historical facts and context that reframe Parker’s career and emphasize the use of the District Court in making Oklahoma statehood inevitable.
Bass Reeves, Ned Christie, Zeke Proctor, and the use of Race in Frontier Heritage Imaginary
While popular narratives abound on these three figures, basic historical facts and context are seldom offered for consideration. This presentation will explain how the misrepresentation of these figures leads to the silencing of overt and institutional racism.
Miss Laura’s Girls, Belle Starr, and the use of Gender in Frontier Heritage Imaginary
Mythic narratives of “brave men” and “wild women” abound in Fort Smith. The historical facts and context portray a more complex situation. This presentation will discuss how gender is used in heritage narratives to legitimate white male hegemony on the mythic frontier.
Performing Frontier Tourism
“Hanging Judge” Parker, “Invincible” Marshal Reeves, “Madam” Laura, “Amazon” Belle: each of these represents a mythic trope of the frontier that creates an image of the past, not a historical description of it. This presentation will detail how the city of Fort Smith has consciously crafted conceptions of its frontier past to sell to tourists.
The Wager of Cultural Heritage Tourism
The U. S. Marshals Museum failed in Oklahoma City in 1989, failed in Laramie in 2001, and has been struggling to get off the ground in Fort Smith since 2003. This presentation will examine the challenges faced by the cultural heritage tourism industry today in a post-industrial economy.
Professor from Lena recognized with award
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HIDE CAPTION
Dan Maher, a Lena native who is now associate professor of anthropology and sociology at the University of Arkansas – Fort Smith, recently was recognized with the Research, Scholarship and Creative Activities Award during a faculty appreciation ceremony at the university. [PHOTO PROVIDED]
Posted May 8, 2017 at 11:27 AM
Updated May 8, 2017 at 11:27 AM
LENA — Dan Maher, a Lena native and associate professor of anthropology and sociology at the University of Arkansas – Fort Smith, recently was recognized with the Research, Scholarship and Creative Activities Award during a faculty appreciation ceremony at the university.
Maher has taught at the university since 1997 on topics including cultural anthropology, anthropological theory, race theory, introductory sociology and social stratification. He has published regular commentary in Talk Business & Politics, served as a board member for the Next Step Day Room and presented regularly on diversity and inclusion topics in the Fort Smith community.
Maher also has accrued a number of professional highlights, including numerous acceptances to the summer institute for the National Endowment for the Humanities and published articles in historical publications.
For information: uafs.edu.
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Print Marked Items
Mythic Frontiers: Remembering, Forgetting,
and Profiting with Cultural Heritage Tourism
A. Dana Weber
Journal of American Folklore.
130.518 (Fall 2017): p480+.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Folklore Society
http://www.afsnet.org
Full Text:
Mythic Frontiers: Remembering, Forgetting, and Profiting with Cultural Heritage Tourism. By Daniel R.
Maher. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2016. Pp. xiii + 294, figures, foreword, acknowledgments,
notes, bibliography, index.)
"The primary narrative of the frontier complex minimizes the devastating consequences that imperialism,
racism, and sexism have had on social minorities in the past and still today as it elevates and legitimizes the
privilege bestowed to white men past and present" (p. 5). This is the core thesis of Daniel R. Maher's
Mythic Frontiers. The book examines the purportedly accurate educational claims of frontier heritage
tourism sites and uncovers that, rather than historical facts, they promote the ideological components listed
in the quote.
A case study of Fort Smith, Arkansas (founded in 1817), Maher's book interprets the sites that constitute the
fort in view of the mechanisms by which they create selective white hegemonic and sexist narratives. The
author connected to the fort, from "Hanging Judge" Isaac C. Parker and the African American lawman
Deputy US Marshal Bass Reeves to Laura Zeigler, the madam of a bordello, and Belle Starr (Myra
Maybelle Shirley), a female horse thief. This personalization renders Maher's dense historical
interpretations relatable and facilitates readers' engagement with each issue he addresses. To debunk the
claims made by ideological narratives, Maher not only provides an impressive array of meticulously
researched historical sources that he interprets incisively, but he also relies on fieldwork that allows him to
flesh out his argument with experiential insights about the investigated localities' current operations.
Maher's field expertise includes his tenure as Director of Fort Smith's Multicultural Center and his
involvement in community service at the same site. This in-depth engagement with the research location
explains at least in part his access to historical sources and his sophistication in analyzing them.
In the first two chapters, Maher introduces readers to the sites, their history, and the concepts that guide his
analysis. These concepts are the "frontier complex"; its complement, the "frontier in the attic"; and the
notion of "cultural heritage." By the "complex," Maher refers to the "simplified, overarching narrative
history of the nation that selectively remembers and portrays some details as it conveniently forgets others"
(p. 4). The phrase "frontier in the attic" paraphrases Confederates in the Attic (Pantheon, 1998), the title of
Tony Horwitz's seminal journalistic foray into the world of American Civil War reenactments, an
indispensable source for any analysis of how live performances aim to reconstruct historical lifeworlds.
Maher adapts it to the frontier where, unlike the still unresolved and more obviously racially charged Civil
War, "white Anglo men definitively won claims to property and power as each frontier space was bent to
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the will of manifest destiny" (p. 3). In his use, today's "frontier in the attic" refers to the "mental and
physical spaces" in which (usually white) Americans act out frustrations and "felt grievances" by
relinquishing them to the past. Paradoxically, bringing them to life in historical roleplay aims to alleviate
them in the present. Maher notes that the "cultural heritage" of Fort Smith consists of "ostensibly authentic
reproductions" of the thus-understood "frontier complex" and the "frontier in the attic" in the "spoken,
visual, and textual interpretations" of its tourist sites, museums, and their practices (p. 4). They reinvent the
past in line with "contemporary ideologies of power, class, gender, and race" (pp. 4-5) and thus offer "potent
formula[s] for identity formation" (p. 23). Maher identifies five major eras during which the frontier
complex evolved, from the controlled US encroachment into Native American territories by way of forts in
the early 1800s to the transformation of these locations into tourist attractions at the end of the nineteenth
century. He then traces how the forts adapted ideologically to subsequent political regimes and fluctuating
economic needs. Today's frontier complex, Maher argues, continues Fort Smith's "tourismification" that
started after World War II and during the Cold War, when the United States represented itself as a world
power by way of film and television westerns. Although frontier culture heritage sites intend to teach about
history, the author demonstrates that they subscribe to such fictions instead and therefore "trade in highly
essentialized notions of gender and race that reinforce the status quo of the American power structure" (p.
17).
Maher's specific readings start in chapter 3 with the interpretation of an orientation video at the Fort Smith
Historic Site. He notes that today's narrative depicts the fort as a peace-keeper with the Native American
populations in the region. Based on historical sources, Maher is able to show, however, that rather than
keeping the peace, the fort served as a "stable place" for the displacement of Native Americans after the
Indian Removal Act of 1830 made tribal lands available for white settlement in Georgia, Alabama, and
Mississippi (p. 53). The author also exposes that this tweaking of facts goes hand in hand with the
"savaging of [the] civilized" (p. 53). The orientation video, he observes, transmits nothing other than
"collective amnesia" when it claims that "Indians... were unfamiliar with farming and missionaries despite
centuries of evidence to the contrary" (p. 54). Moreover, when a council held at Fort Smith in 1865
purported to negotiate separate treaties with the Five Nations of Indian Territory, its true goal was not to
establish good relations with them but to take advantage of their instability after the Civil War and liquidate
their tribal self-government (p. 70). Maher traces how "Indian" and "white" identities were constructed
socially in this context according to the parameters of the frontier complex, namely, in a spirit of restoring
whiteness (where there had been none) and of divesting the "Indians" of civilization.
The historical evidence that Maher brings forth in the next chapter ("The Hanging Judges Injustices")
illustrates that, far from being the "archetypal superhero" (p. 88) and "epitome of judiciousness" (p. 105) as
tourist and film narratives would have it, Judge Parker was "out of step... with legal proceedings of the day"
(p. 88), obstinate, and possibly a "megalomaniac" (p. 90). Contrary to what is believed about him, he did
not oversee a vast territory. The author can only surmise how many innocent individuals may have been
executed under his tenure (p. 90). Maher devotes chapter 5 ("The Invincible Marshal's Oppression") to Bass
Reeves, a runaway slave who became a US marshal in Indian Territory. He uncovers how this remarkable
individual was reinvented as a "transcendent figure who evaded all levels of systematic discrimination" (p.
124) and now serves as a "poster-boy for neoliberal, color-blind racism" (p. 127). To historically
contextualize Reeves' biography, the author explains the complexity of race relations on the ArkansasOklahoma
border (the former Indian Territory). Here, not only were settled and civilized Native Americans
who had had their own economies and legal systems disenfranchised and recast as "wild" after the Civil
War, but freed African Americans (some of whom had served as slaves of the Five Nations) were also
marginalized and held out with "a false hope of equality" (p. 121). Today's frontier complex reinvents
Reeves as the unique and admirable case of an illiterate man who was nevertheless able to practice the law
scrupulously. He is even believed (incorrectly) to have inspired the figure of the Lone Ranger (pp. 127,
137). Maher demonstrates that Reeves was neither the only Black marshal in the region, nor was he
illiterate (pp. 129-32). His contemporary portrayals--including a statue dedicated to him in 2012 and a Bass
Reeves reenactment troupe (p. 138)--only serve to obfuscate how Jim Crow laws discriminated against
thousands of African Americans (p. 132). A particularly compelling component of this chapter is Maher's
discussion of Baridi Nkokheli, the former director of Fort Smith's Department of Sanitation and a Reeves
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impersonator. In spite of Nkokheli's roleplay paying lip service to the frontier complex story about the
Deputy Marshal, his motivations were deeper and more personal. In the role of Reeves, Nkokheli payed
homage to his own father, a lawman who was killed in the line of duty and who, in his eyes, resembles
Reeves (p. 208). This reenactor's performance underlays the problematic frontier portrayal of the Marshal
with acts of commemoration and healing and thus reveals the complex and oftentimes ambiguous nature of
hobbyist roleplay.
The next chapter ("The Hello Bordello and Brave Men Matrix") deconstructs sexist frontier narratives about
a supposedly cheerful frontier bordello and the outlaw Belle Starr. Maher argues that both narratives
obscure the true "exploits of white men on the frontier, reinforce female domesticity, conceal facts such as
men flocking to Oklahoma Territory for divorces," and even hide the inconvenient history of soldiers
frequenting Fort Smith's multiple brothels from the 1940s to the 1960s (pp. 144-5). For example, the
purported success story of brothel madam Laura Zeigler enforces gender inequalities when it glosses over
historical experiments with prostitution laws and the corruption they caused, silences the existence of a
multitude of such establishments, and represents prostitution as a fun occupation. Another historical
individual who fulfills a comparable function is Belle Starr, an educated, independent woman who married
several times, committed crimes, and was assassinated deviously (p. 166). Frontier complex narratives
depict her as a wild Amazon who veered away from her gender role and therefore deserved what she got.
They thus serve to cement the idea that westward expansion was safe for women as long as they conformed
to the "hegemonic rule of heterosexual normativity" (p. 167).
In chapter 7 ("Performing 'Frontier in the Attic'"), Maher investigates how Fort Smith's gallows (burnt down
in 1897), the brothel, and Rooster Cogburn--a fictional character who has come to be viewed as a historical
person--were reconstructed in films, tourist attractions, and brands. In spite of critical voices that aim to
"debunk the frontier tourism performance [s]" (p. 185), reconstructions continue to conflate facts and
fictions inextricably (p. 190). The resulting frontier complex narratives that the author has exposed so far
literally come to play in the reenactors' performances that he discusses in this chapter. In spite of such
groups' role-playing efforts, their interest in authenticity, and economic investments in historical attire, in
Maher's view, their displays do not go beyond simple black-and-white, oftentimes haplessly enacted skits
that are obviously inspired by film westerns. The author emphasizes that while such individuals believe that
they keep the historical frontier alive, they in fact co-constitute the frontier complex because their
performances adhere to its fictional narratives (pp. 196-204). Moreover, their performances "mute any of
the real pain and anguish" (p. 201) of shoot-outs and other violent occurrences at the frontier. Supported by
an interview given by leading frontier historian Richard Slotkin, the author even speculates that this
rendering harmless of a brutal past by imagining it as white, male freedom and self-empowerment may have
inspired recent shootings in the United States (p. 211).
Maher concludes his study with a look at Fort Smith's ongoing efforts to capitalize on frontier tourism by
planning a new Marshals Museum (chap. 8, "Doubling Down on the Wager of Frontier Tourism"). Based on
an abundance of meticulously researched facts and figures, the author demonstrates the vicissitudes of this
undertaking in an era when the competition between tourist sites is fierce, the interests that drive new
initiatives oftentimes self-serving, and museum attendance diminishing (p. 214). In this context, the effort to
counter one museum's losses by erecting another appears anachronistic and unrealistic. Maher concludes his
book open-endedly. He wonders whether a profitable era of the frontier complex may still dawn or if it has
irretrievably closed.
Overall, Maher's book is an impressive study of a phenomenon with wide ramifications: the imaginary
frontier that brackets inconvenient truths such as juridical corruption and racial and gender oppression in the
service of establishing as facts the narratives of white hegemonic domination, and profits financially from
these narratives. Although the core parameters of the study (wanting historical accuracy, uncovering racial
and gender inequalities) are somewhat to be expected in the context of anthropological, ethnological,
folklore, or culture studies research, Maher succeeds in bringing forth a powerful and persuasive analysis
that underscores the necessity of conducting academic research precisely along these lines. His book warns
of the dangers of reformulating frontier history into "mythic" tales that carry forth historical inaccuracies
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and varieties of power inequality. Well researched, densely written, and significant, this analytical study has
the potential to make an impact beyond the academic audiences that will likely be sympathetic to its claims.
One can only wish for makers and consumers of frontier heritage tourism to also take Mythic Frontiers to
heart.
A. DANA WEBER Florida State University
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Weber, A. Dana. "Mythic Frontiers: Remembering, Forgetting, and Profiting with Cultural Heritage
Tourism." Journal of American Folklore, vol. 130, no. 518, 2017, p. 480+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A512777029/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d5343525.
Accessed 16 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A512777029
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Mythic Frontiers: Remembering, Forgetting,
and Profiting with Cultural Heritage Tourism
Richard Megraw
Journal of Southern History.
83.3 (Aug. 2017): p671+.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Southern Historical Association
http://www.uga.edu/~sha
Full Text:
Mythic Frontiers: Remembering, Forgetting, and Profiting with Cultural Heritage Tourism. By Daniel R.
Maher. Cultural Heritage Series. (Gainesville and other cities: University Press of Florida, 2016. Pp. xvi,
294. $79.95, ISBN 978-0-8130-6253-2.)
Although historians may not recognize the specific case under study, they will find very familiar thematic
concerns in Daniel R. Maher's reading of the "frontier complex" in Fort Smith, Arkansas (p. 3). Following
such authors as Tony Horwitz, David Lowenthal, and Richard R. Flores, Maher, an anthropologist at the
University of Arkansas-Fort Smith, uses the term frontier complex to problematize the numerous iconic
images modern Americans have used to define, display, celebrate, and, above all, commercialize the Wild
West. All across America, under varying guises as "Frontier Days," "Founder's Days," or "Pioneer Days,"
local communities invoke cowboys and Indians, marshals and outlaws, to supplement flagging municipal
revenues with tourist dollars. Ocean City, Maryland; Wetumpka, Alabama; Tombstone, Arizona; and Dodge
City, Kansas are all in on it, and Fort Smith is, too, in especially big and revealing ways.
Established in 1817 at the confluence of the Arkansas and Poteau Rivers, Fort Smith was among the
original network of military posts ranging from Louisiana to Minnesota designed to police the first
"permanent Indian frontier" (p. 7). A second Fort Smith, constructed in 1838, survived Zachary Taylor's
budget ax (he lived there from 1842 to 1845) and flourished after the U.S.-Mexican War as garrison
personnel escorted swarms of westering Americans down the Santa Fe Trail and across the continent to the
California gold fields. This second fort was decommissioned in 1871, the year Fort Smith began what
became its quarter-century run as the seat of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas.
Here "Hanging Judge" Isaac C. Parker dispensed justice to outlaws hauled before him by an impressive list
of U.S. marshals, both real and fictional, including Bass Reeves, a black man who may or may not have
been the model for the Lone Ranger, and Rooster Cogburn, hero of the Charles Portis novel True Grit
(1968).
Especially since the golden age of frontier tourism in the heady days after World War II, Fort Smith has
trafficked heavily in Wild West imagery. Today, some fourteen sites, most of them clustered downtown near
the Arkansas River, beckon curious motorists to stop and explore, among others, Miss Laura's Visitor
Center, located in a former bordello, the Fort Smith National Historic Site, Judge Parker's Courtroom, and a
nearby replica gallows, where tourists can play executioner to condemned dolls. Local residents
impersonate both Miss Laura and Bass Reeves. Other reenactors stage mock shootouts.
Probing Fort Smith's "frontier complex" through three years of fieldwork, Maher exposes enough false
fronts to fill several Hollywood back lots and shows how the town's lived history bore little resemblance to
the heritage local boosters promote. The original fort facilitated the expansion of white settlement at the
expense of indigenous groups. The territory over which Judge Parker imposed "order" has been deliberately
inflated over the years, while the Supreme Court overturned several of his decisions. Bass Reeves and the
man who plays him are ensnarled in the complexities of contemporary identity politics. Miss Laura did not
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preside over a houseful of hookers with hearts of gold. Local residents prefer to ignore the extent to which
the town has benefited from federal spending.
None of this will surprise historians, especially those of the West; nevertheless, Maher's work contributes
meaningfully to the ongoing discussion of how Americans display and consume their complicated past. One
can hardly blame local promoters for displaying a rosy version of the Old West. Their interest is commerce,
not critical interrogation. Yet, especially in this anxious age of deindustrialization, neoliberal resurgence,
and global transformation, we ignore at our peril Maher's passionate critique of this confected "heritage,"
the power relationships it sustains, and the history it erases.
Richard Megraw
University of Alabama
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Megraw, Richard. "Mythic Frontiers: Remembering, Forgetting, and Profiting with Cultural Heritage
Tourism." Journal of Southern History, vol. 83, no. 3, 2017, p. 671+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A501078130/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=fee4474a.
Accessed 16 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A501078130
12/16/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Maher, Daniel R.: Mythic frontiers:
remembering, forgetting, and profiting with
cultural heritage tourism
C.R. King
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries.
54.3 (Nov. 2016): p439.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Full Text:
Maher, Daniel R. Mythic frontiers: remembering, forgetting, and profiting with cultural heritage tourism.
University Press of Florida, 2016. 294p bibl index afp ISBN 9780813062532 cloth, $79.95
54-1375
F419
2015-41910 CIP
In this insightful ethnography, Maher explores the meaning and making of heritage today by concerning
himself with the frontier, emphasizing that it is a powerful and profitable trope--at once an idea, a source of
identity, and an industry. He refers to the interface of culture and capital anchored in this key US myth as
"the frontier complex" and draws upon fieldwork in Fort Smith, AR, to explore its workings and
significance. In this context, Maher usefully distinguishes heritage from history, stressing the production of
the past and the social forces that have shaped its production nationally and locally. Through close readings,
he details the manner in which tourist sites use popular interpretations and audience expectations to fashion
attractions and experiences that endorse received relations and established ideas. Indeed, through his case
studies, Maher nicely teases out the ways in which restagings of the mythic frontier encourage partial
recollections and overt erasures that comfort visitors by leaving racism, sexism, and imperialism
untroubled. While offering a solid account of heritage tourism and the frontier complex, he also questions
their continued viability in the face of emergent cultural, political, and economic trends. Summing Up: **
Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.--C. R. King, Washington State University
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
King, C.R. "Maher, Daniel R.: Mythic frontiers: remembering, forgetting, and profiting with cultural
heritage tourism." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Nov. 2016, p. 439. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A469640803/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=b3fd4ca4. Accessed 16 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A469640803