Landscapes Of The New West

In the early 1970s, empowered by the civil rights and women's movements, a new group of women writers began speaking to the American public. Their topic, broadly defined, was the postmodern American West. By the mid-1980s, their combined works made for a bona fide literary groundswell in both critical and commercial terms. However, as Krista Comer notes, despite the attentions of publishers, the media, and millions of readers, literary scholars have rarely addressed this movement or its writers. Too many critics, Comer argues, still enamored of western images that are both masculine and antimodern, have been slow to reckon with the emergence of a new, far more "feminine," postmodern, multiracial, and urban west. Here, she calls for a redesign of the field of western cultural studies, one that engages issues of gender and race and is more self-conscious about space itself_especially that cherished symbol of western "authenticity," open landscape. Surveying works by Joan Didion, Wanda Coleman, Maxine Hong Kingston, Leslie Marmon Silko, Barbara Kingsolver, Pam Houston, Louise Erdrich, Sandra Cisneros, and Mary Clearman Blew, Comer shows how these and other contemporary women writers have mapped new geographical imaginations upon the cultural and social spaces of today's American West.

Originally published in 1974, this book is now regarded as a classic book of photography in the pantheon of landmark projects exploring American culture and society.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Reconciling explosive growth with often majestic landscape defines New Geographies of the American West. Geographer William Travis examines contemporary land use changes and development patterns from the Mississippi to the Pacific, and assesses the ecological and social outcomes of Western development. Unlike previous "boom" periods dependent on oil or gold, the modern population explosion in the West reflects a sustained passion for living in this specific landscape. But the encroaching exurbs, ranchettes, and ski resorts are slicing away at the very environment that Westerners cherish. Efforts to manage growth in the West are usually stymied at the state and local levels. Is it possible to improve development patterns within the West's traditional anti-planning, pro-growth milieu, or is a new model needed? Can the region develop sustainably, protecting and managing its defining wildness, while benefiting from it, too? Travis takes up the challenge , suggesting that functional and attractive settlement can be embedded in preserved lands, working landscapes, and healthy ecologies.

This wide-ranging collection of essays is intended to provoke both thought and action. The pieces collected here explore a variety of issues facing the American West -- deteriorating air quality, suburban sprawl, species loss, grassland degradation, disappearing Native American languages, and many others -- and suggest steps toward "healing." More than "dealing with" or "solving," according to the editors, the concept of healing addresses not just symptoms buy their underlying causes, offering not just a temporary cure but a permanent one. The very idea of restoring the West to health, the contributors and editors contend, unleashes our imaginations, sharpens our minds, and gives meaning to the ways we choose to live our lives. At the same time, acknowledging the profound difficulty of the work that lies ahead immunizes us against our own arrogance as we set about the task of healing the West.

The western American landscape has always had great significance in American thinking, requiring an unlikely union between frontier mythology and the reality of a fragile western environment. Additionally it has borne the burden of being a gendered space, seen by some as the traditional "virgin land" of the explorers and pioneers, subject to masculine desires, and by others as a masculine space in which the feminine is neither desired nor appreciated. Both Wallace Stegner and Cormac McCarthy focus on this landscape and environment; its spiritual, narrative, symbolic, imaginative, and ideological force is central to their work. In this study, McGilchrist shows how their various treatments of these issues relate to the social climates (pre- and post-Vietnam era) in which they were written, and how despite historical discontinuities, both Stegner and McCarthy reveal a similar unease about the effects of the myth of the frontier on American thought and life. The gendering of the landscape is revealed as indicative of the attempts to deny the failure of the myth, and to force the often numinous western landscape into parameters which will never contain it. Stegner's pre-Vietnam sensibility allows the natural world to emerge tentatively triumphant from the ruins of frontier mythology, whereas McCarthy's conclusions suggest a darker future for the West in particular and America in general. However, McGilchrist suggests that the conclusion of McCarthy's Border Trilogy, upon which her arguments regarding McCarthy are largely based, offers a gleam of hope in its final conclusion of acceptance of the feminine.

No evolution of a geographical region was more rapid and transformative than that of the American West at Mid-Century. "New West" explores the innovations that shaped this unique architectural landscape, through the vibrant, compelling images of the colour-saturated, highly-textured, popular art form of the Linen Post Card. Collision, eruption, and erosion are the formative forces that account for the raw vitality and breathtaking beauty of the American West. While it has taken 4.5 billion years to write the complex geological and hydrological history embedded in this region, it has taken less than 200 years to write the story of its modern transformation into an interdependent network of cities, parks, roads, infrastructure, and communications. "New West" draws from over 500 Mid-Century Linen Post Card images, to explore in detail the changes that the four waves of innovation; steam, steel, oil, and information, have wrought upon the land

This volume is a cogent empirical analysis of the interplay between a region’s natural amenities and its socioeconomic evolution. It focuses on the rural sectors of America’s Intermountain West region, which lies between the Cascades and Sierra Nevada mountains to the west and the Rocky Mountains to the east. Coherently structured and meticulously detailed, it adds much to our understanding of the ways an area’s forests, lakes, mountains, parkland and historic attractions affect residents’ sense of well-being as well as the sociodemographic and economic changes they experience. The book examines patterns of growth and change linked to the emergence of ‘New West’ conditions, assessing their implications for the wider community as well as discussing the impact these trends could have on the consumption of natural resources. It also points to ways in which communities and their development can be managed sustainably. The tight geographical focus of this valuable resource ensures a depth of analysis which can be applied to similar regions worldwide. Based on a large-scale, random-sample survey of both full-time and seasonal residents, it provides a much-needed overview of the macro-level economic, demographic, and social transformations affecting rural communities in America. As such, the book has relevance for all researchers concerned with rural development, the changes impacting rural landscapes, and natural resource management.