Heritage Religion and the Mormons

2020 ◽  
pp. 336-354
Author(s):  
Colleen McDannell
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Media Technology ◽  
Historic Sites ◽  
Historic Site ◽  
The Past ◽  
Values And Beliefs ◽  
Mormon Battalion ◽  
Heritage Industry

This chapter teases out the various ways that religion intersects with historical material culture to create “heritage religion.” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints maintains a series of “historic sites” across the United States. Like nonreligious historic sites, Latter-day Saint sites use material culture, historic re-enactments, educational videos, and sophisticated media technology to teach visitors about sacred places and histories. However, Latter-day Saint historic sites have the additional mission to spiritually uplift members and convert nonbelievers. By using recently renovated Mormon Battalion Historic site of San Diego as a case study, this chapter illustrates how the secular “heritage industry” and traditional religion merge to become “heritage religion.” Heritage religion is defined as a set of generic religious beliefs, cast into the past, and translated into media and material culture. Through heritage religion, faith communities use the past to make sense out of their present and craft an agenda for the future. “Heritage Religion and the Mormons” illustrates how a specific historic site can be constructed to convince visitors that they can easily understand the past because they share similar values and mutual struggles. Through material culture, history is made familiar and the complexities of interpretation fall away. Through heritage religion, church leaders for the Latter-day Saints can reinforce religious practices that resonate with wider American values and beliefs.

Searching for Christian America

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Lauren R. Kerby
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Dynamic Relationship ◽  
History Of ◽  
White Evangelicals ◽  
Heritage Industry ◽  
Christian Nationalism

This chapter introduces how white evangelicals imagine and reimagine the American past and how their dynamic relationship to the nation informs their political behavior. It draws on ethnographic research on Christian heritage tourism in Washington, D.C.; the history of the Christian Right; narrative theories of identity; and the material culture of the nation’s capital. Together, these sources show that white evangelicals imagine themselves in four different roles in the American story—founders, exiles, victims, and saviors—and that they see history as the key to America’s salvation. In their view, the nation is in decline, but if they can restore their nostalgic, imagined past, it will prosper once more. This jeremiad is central to white Christian nationalism, and it is perpetuated by the Christian heritage industry, including Christian heritage tours that capitalize on the ambient Christianity of D.C. Attention to this lived history is essential for understanding how religion and politics entwine in the United States today.

scholarly journals Understanding Visitor Motivations at Jimmy Carter National Historic Site: A Principal Components Approach

Heritage ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 328-334
Author(s):  
Zachary Miller ◽  
William Rice ◽  
B. Taff ◽  
Peter Newman
Keyword(s):  
National Park ◽  
National Park Service ◽  
The United States ◽  
Jimmy Carter ◽  
Historic Sites ◽  
Historic Site ◽  
The People ◽  
Natural Parks ◽  
Visitor Experiences ◽  
Park Service

National park sites draw tourism all across the United States. Although large natural parks see much attention, most national park units are actually designed to protect and interpret unique cultural and historic resources. As an example of this, the National Park Service administers numerous presidential historic sites. However, we know very little about the people who visit them. Understanding visitor motivations to presidential historic sites can help to provide for better visitor experiences of presidential resources. This research uses intercept surveys at the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site in Plains, Georgia, to gain an understanding of visitor motivations. From the results, seven motivation types are identified. The information in this article can be used to better understand public values related to presidential resources, and to help the managers of these resources to improve on-site experiences by addressing visitor motivations.

scholarly journals Dressed in a Present from the Past: The Transfers and Transformations of a Swedish Bridal Crown in the United States

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (5) ◽  
pp. 695-717 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lizette Grad én
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
New World ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Past ◽  
Museum Object ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
And Performance

Ever since the emigration from the Nordic countries the Old world and the New world have maintained an exchange of ideas, customs, and material culture. This cultural heritage consists of more than remnants of the past. Drawing on theories of material culture and performance this article highlights the role of gifts in materializing relationships between individuals, families and organizations in the wake of migration. First, I build on a suggested coinage of the term heritage gifts as a way of materializing relationships. Thereafter, I map out the numerous roles which a Swedish bridal crown play in the United States: as museum object, object of display and loaned to families for wedding ceremonies in America. The transfers and transformations of the bridal crown enhances a drama of a migration heritage. This dynamic drama brings together kin in Sweden and America and maps specific locations into a flexible space via the trajectory of crown-clad female bodies.

Prehistoric Social Groups in North Norway

1956 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 84-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gutorm Gjessing
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
The United States ◽  
Culture Study ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Answering Questions ◽  
North Norway

‘They have accused the archaeologist of tatting endless taxonomic rosettes of the I same old ball of “material culture” and maintained that his findings are next to useless for the purpose of history and culture study. It seems that the archaeologists are becoming as Tolstoy once said of modern historians, like deaf men answering questions which no one has asked them. In their broader implications these accusations are all too true’ (Taylor, 1948, p. 95). Certainly this not too kind, ironical remark was explicitly aimed at archaeologists in the United States; yet it may, perhaps, be suspected that even some of their European colleagues feel somewhat uneasy on being confronted by such an unflattering mirror. One has, undoubtedly, the feeling that relatively few archaeologists in the West have ever really scrutinized critically what they and their field of study are ultimately aiming at, apart from the somewhat loose and undefined aim of ‘reconstructing the past’. Now, this ‘past’ obviously does not consist of ‘taxonomic rosettes’ for their own sake, nor of economic techniques only. There can be little doubt of the validity of V. Gordon Childe's remark that the cultures established by archaeology represent societies, and in other of his writings, most explicitly in his intriguing book, Social Evolution (Childe, 1951), he has laid down the foundations of a ‘socio-archaeology’.

The Queerest House in Cambridge

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 44-69
Author(s):  
Hilary Iris Lowe
Keyword(s):  
Public History ◽  
Historic Sites ◽  
Historic Site ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
House Museums ◽  
The Past ◽  
House Museum ◽  
Historic House ◽  
History Of

One of the great challenges for public historians in LGBTQ history is finding and developing interpretation of the history of sexuality for public audiences at current historic sites. This article answers this challenge by repositioning historic house museums as sites of some of the most important LGBTQ public history we have, by using the Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a case study. At this house museum, we can re-see historical interpretation through a queer lens and take on histories that have been until recently “slandered, ignored, and erased” from our public narratives of the past.1

Collectors and Museums

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Manning Stevens
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
American Indians ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
The United States ◽  
Indigenous Culture ◽  
Cultural Centers ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

This chapter examines the history of museums as it relates to American Indians in the United States, from the eighteenth century to the present. The chapter takes into account the often troubling use of the museum to depict indigenous societies as exotic relics of the past, while at the same time alienating artifacts of their material culture from them. In order to better understand the rise of museums and cultural centers created and run by Native peoples in recent decades, it is first necessary to understand both the histories and the practices of non-Indian run museums that demanded this necessary corrective from within indigenous communities. The chapter concludes with three examples of contemporary indigenous culture centers.

Hot Interpretation of Controversial Topics at Batoche National Historic Site, Saskatchewan, Canada

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-62
Author(s):  
Glen T. Hvenegaard ◽  
Heather J. Marshall ◽  
Raynald Lemelin
Keyword(s):  
Affective Responses ◽  
Collaborative Management ◽  
Historic Sites ◽  
Historic Site ◽  
The Past ◽  
Resilient Communities ◽  
New Thinking ◽  
Management Approaches ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One

Historic sites can facilitate public interaction with controversial topics through “hot interpretation” that promotes affective responses. The goal of this article is to critically analyze the evolution of interpretive messaging of the armed resistance of 1885 at Batoche National Historic Site, Canada, through the lens of hot interpretation. Based on a literature review, interpretation evaluations, and site visits, the authors examine how collaborative management approaches have fostered an evolution in interpretation from the one-truth, to parallel narratives, and finally to the “many voices” approach within the hot interpretation framework. This overview suggest how collaborative management approaches and progressive interpretation strategies can heal the hurt of the past, validate various depictions of history, provide venues for democratic discourse about contested issues, generate new thinking, and support resilient communities.

Archaeology education and the political landscape of American schools

Antiquity ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 74 (283) ◽  
pp. 194-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Elaine Davis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
The Status ◽  
Values And Beliefs ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Schools ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Governmental Control

Education, a primary mode for transmitting society's knowledge, values and beliefs, is a highly political endeavour. To understand fully the place of archaeology within the framework of public education in the United States, some background in the broader political landscape and sanctioned curricula in American schools is necessary. This article examines some key aspects of these issues, including governmental control of education, the ‘history of history’ in schools, and the appropriation of the past. It also looks at the status of archaeology education in the United States and considers an appropriate role for pre-college archaeology.

International Research and Variation in Views of Ethnicity

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-72
Author(s):  
Ella Inglebret ◽  
Amy Skinder-Meredith ◽  
Shana Bailey ◽  
Carla Jones ◽  
Ashley France
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Classification System ◽  
International Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Articles ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
Research Participants ◽  
The Past ◽  
International Scale ◽  
Publication Patterns

The authors in this article first identify the extent to which research articles published in three American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) journals included participants, age birth to 18 years, from international backgrounds (i.e., residence outside of the United States), and go on to describe associated publication patterns over the past 12 years. These patterns then provide a context for examining variation in the conceptualization of ethnicity on an international scale. Further, the authors examine terminology and categories used by 11 countries where research participants resided. Each country uses a unique classification system. Thus, it can be expected that descriptions of the ethnic characteristics of international participants involved in research published in ASHA journal articles will widely vary.

Proportion of Individuals With Past-Year Suicidal Ideation Who Attempted Suicide Over the Past 10 Years in the United States, and the Influence of Age and Sex

Crisis ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Shannon Lange ◽  
Courtney Bagge ◽  
Charlotte Probst ◽  
Jürgen Rehm
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Suicidal Ideation ◽  
Random Effects ◽  
Attempted Suicide ◽  
Suicide Attempts ◽  
The United States ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Past ◽  
Meta Analyses ◽  
Age Category

Abstract. Background: In recent years, the rate of death by suicide has been increasing disproportionately among females and young adults in the United States. Presumably this trend has been mirrored by the proportion of individuals with suicidal ideation who attempted suicide. Aim: We aimed to investigate whether the proportion of individuals in the United States with suicidal ideation who attempted suicide differed by age and/or sex, and whether this proportion has increased over time. Method: Individual-level data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 2008–2017, were used to estimate the year-, age category-, and sex-specific proportion of individuals with past-year suicidal ideation who attempted suicide. We then determined whether this proportion differed by age category, sex, and across years using random-effects meta-regression. Overall, age category- and sex-specific proportions across survey years were estimated using random-effects meta-analyses. Results: Although the proportion was found to be significantly higher among females and those aged 18–25 years, it had not significantly increased over the past 10 years. Limitations: Data were self-reported and restricted to past-year suicidal ideation and suicide attempts. Conclusion: The increase in the death by suicide rate in the United States over the past 10 years was not mirrored by the proportion of individuals with past-year suicidal ideation who attempted suicide during this period.

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