The American Ideology of Space

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The American Ideology of Space

• Illustrations of the three main categories of
  analysis in
• Leo Marxs article

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3 competing ideologies

• Utilitarian
• conquest of the continent as progress
• Primitivist
• Wilderness as the highest value
• Pastoral
• - The middle landscape

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John Gast, American Progress, 1872
Utilitarian vision - 1
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Currier and Ives, Niagara Suspension Bridge, 1856
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Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way, 1868
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Currier and Ives, Through to the Pacific
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Moving agriculture WestCrops and livestock
from East projected into the new
settingTransportation links(Steamboat too big
for bridge!)Surveying, mining, and hunting in
backgroundPrint Gaylord Watson and Tenney
Weaver, 1881
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Advertisement for McCormack Reapers
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2. The Primitive

• Thomas Cole
• Glorification of frontier
• John Muir
• Sierra Club

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Thomas Cole,Daniel Boone in the Wilderness
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Thomas Cole, The Hunters Return, 1845
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Cole, Home in the Woods, 1847
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3. Pastoralism

• The middle landscape between wilderness and
• Civilization.
• Thomas Jefferson
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Andrew Jackson Downing, landscape architect
• Frederick Law Olmstead

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Thomas Cole, Landscape, 1825
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View of Erie Canal, by John William Hall,
watercolor on paper, 1829
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Richmond, Virginia, lithograph