National parks are the places that present ideas of nature to
Americans: Zion, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone bring to mind
quintessential and awe-inspiring wilderness. By examining how
rhetoric-particularly visual rhetoric-has worked to shape our views
of nature and the "natural" place of humans, Observation Points
offers insights into questions of representation, including the
formation of national identity. As Thomas Patin reveals, the term
"nature" is artificial and unstable, in need of constant
maintenance and reconstruction. The process of stabilizing its
representation, he notes, is unavoidably political. America's
national parks and monuments show how visual rhetoric operates to
naturalize and stabilize representations of the environment. As
contributors demonstrate, visual rhetoric is often transparent,
structuring experience while remaining hidden in plain sight.
Scenic overlooks and turnouts frame views for tourists. Visitor
centers, with their display cases and photographs and orientation
films, provide their own points of view-literally and figuratively.
Guidebooks, brochures, and other publications present still other
ways of seeing. At the same time, images of America's "natural"
world have long been employed for nationalist and capitalist ends,
linking expansionism with American greatness and the "natural"
triumph of European Americans over Native Americans. The essays
collected here cover a wide array of subjects, including park
architecture, landscape painting, public ceremonies, and techniques
of display. Contributors are from an equally broad range of
disciplines-art history, geography, museum studies, political
science, American studies, and many other fields. Together they
advance a provocative new visual genealogy of representation.
Contributors: Robert M. Bednar, Southwestern U, Georgetown, Texas;
Teresa Bergman, U of the Pacific; Albert Boime, UCLA; William
Chaloupka, Colorado State U; Gregory Clark, Brigham Young U;
Stephen Germic, Rocky Mountain College; Gareth John, St. Cloud
State U, Minnesota; Mark Neumann, Northern Arizona U; Peter Peters,
Maastricht U; Cindy Spurlock, Appalachian State U; David A.
Tschida, U of Wisconsin, Eau Claire; Sabine Wilke, U of Washington.
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