Scholarship & Research
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Item The Effect of branch line abandonment on local highways : a site specific study(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Agriculture, 1984) Fortenbery, T. RandallItem Pleasure ground for the future : the evolving cultural landscape of Yellowstone Lake, Yellowstone National Park 1870-1966(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2004) Youngs, Yolonda Lucille; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: William WyckoffYellowstone Lake is located in the protected federal lands of Yellowstone National Park. This park is situated in the Rocky Mountains and its boundaries reach into the tri-state areas of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. While many researchers have investigated the history and geography of Yellowstone National Park, Yellowstone Lake has been largely ignored as a topic of research. In order to reconstruct the evolution of Yellowstone Lake as a cultural landscape, this study focuses on Yellowstone Lake temporally and spatially as an important and central area of Yellowstone National Park. This study suggests that Yellowstone Lake's large and diverse physical geography produces diverse natural environments, cultural landscapes, and national park experiences. The results of this study show that through a combination of concessionaire investment, government management, and visitor demand, the cultural landscape of Yellowstone Lake has changed dramatically over time. This change is depicted through a verbal and cartographic description of Yellowstone Lake's cultural landscape evolution from 1870 to 1966. The verbal description is accompanied by a series of maps reflecting significant changes in the lake's cultural landscape.Item The place-based classroom in transition(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2012) Munro-Schuster, Maria Danelle; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Robert PetroneIn this exploration of place, place-based pedagogy and transition, the author confronts the meaning of place in education, questioning her own use and understanding of the places in which she teaches and the way in which traditional place-based pedagogy has been regarded. Calling attention to the lack of place-based pedagogy in the college classroom, using Robert Brooke's Guiding Principles of a Place Conscious Education (2003) as framework, she walks the reader through the design of such a course for a basic writing classroom. Taking a step back from the traditional usage of place, which places an emphasis on both naturalness and permanence, the author focuses the course on the unnatural and temporary environment of the University. Writings collected from the course allows the author to further contemplate her students' understanding of the University as a place, and who they perceive themselves to be in the place of the University. The author likens the experience of college to that of travel, suggesting college is a temporary place that provides a time of neutrality in which new identities can be explored, as Tourist Studies' White and White (2004) put forth of travel. This thinking lends her analysis of student writings collected during the course to a theoretical framework used in the analysis of place narratives in tourist studies, as well as William Bridges' work on life transitions (2004). She finds that students initially indicate they are located in an imaginary University in which they are working through the process of grieving. She also finds that the University becomes the backdrop for student performances which assist in the process of identity (re)construction. These analyses indicate the complex multi-functionality the place of the University serves for students and how it can be in opposition to how it is perceived and utilized by instructors. With self at the center of initial understandings of a new place, this research advises that students can be facilitated through grieving, with the assistance of writing, to a state of neutrality where awareness of new educational concepts and identity formation can transpire.Item Between tourist and traveler : exploring the threshold between fast and slow(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2010) Gamble, Alexander William; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: David FortinSpeed in relation to traveling leads to the loss of a direct engagement with the physical environment. Tourists travel as quickly as possible to see as much as they can, and after arriving at a station or airport they will leave the terminal in the travel mindset and still be focused on efficiency and speed, preventing them from connecting with the character of their destination on a deeper level. It is my goal to create a transition space for travelers that mediates between the intimate character of place and the ubiquitous nature of high speed travel. By designing for a traveler's inertia I believe that architecture has the potential to better transition people between speed space and the experiential realm. Slowing down the tourist can allow for more meaningful experiences of place and let the traveler engage more deeply with one's physical environment.Item Wonder and spectacle in the world's first national park : railroad imagery of Yellowstone National Park(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2011) Kress, Ellen Rae; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Robert Rydell.Much has been written about Yellowstone National Park, but little of it considers images as representations of the Park. In this study, I examine the imagery of two series of railroad advertisements for Yellowstone: the Northern Pacific Railroad's Wonderland campaign (1883-1910) and the Union Pacific Railroad's bear campaign (1923-1960). Despite the axiom "you can't judge a book by its cover," clearly the creators of these brochures think otherwise; they intend these images to convey the essence of Yellowstone. Both sets of railroad imagery refer to Yellowstone as an unusual place, a wonder, a curiosity, even a freak show. The Northern Pacific Wonderland series emphasizes the geothermal and geological features, while the Union Pacific series features bears. The Northern Pacific brochures are in and of themselves a collection of fragmented pieces of Yellowstone, like a cabinet of curiosities, a pre-modern collection kept by European social elites. By focusing on the unique and the singular, they question the laws of nature. They co-opt the metaphors of gender and race in order to portray Yellowstone as an island untouched by humans that resisted the march of Progress and Civilization. This idea of Yellowstone's separateness is what gives it commercial value and situates it squarely within American commercial culture. The Union Pacific bear images feature a theme of performance and entertainment. The Park and its bears and geysers are now tamed and serve to entertain tourists; Yellowstone is now a mass spectacle. The bears are entertainers, clowns, and freaks; they question the boundary between human and animal and thus cause anxiety. But traditional gender roles are upheld, and issues of class are largely avoided, which serve to calm the anxiety that was raised. In both railroad representations, Yellowstone National Park serves as a foil, a place modern tourists can visit to define themselves. These representations of Yellowstone chart a shift from elitism to consumer democracy; clearly ideas about Yellowstone National Park, and representations of it, have changed and continue to change with the times.