Cranial Exercises 2 (Final Exam)Document 1: Mythic Frontiers: Remembering, Forgetting, and Profiting with Cultural Heritage
by Daniel Maher
The ever-rolling wave of the frontier border that spread from east to west in the nation’s
history enables virtually every state in the Union, and any city within it, to lay claim to some
point in time which it sat squarely on the border of the frontier. This imagined moment in
history creates a marker between an advancing western civilization on one side of it and a wild
savagery that lay beyond it…The primary narrative of the frontier complex minimizes the
devastating consequences that imperialism, racism, and sexism have had on social minorities in
the past and still today elevates and legitimizes the privilege to white men past and present.
Heritage thus creates a selective and exaggerated cultural memory in which flesh-and-blood
mortals are turned into legends, just beyond normal human abilities, and facts take wing and fly
to mythic heights…The continued growth of frontier tourism in the 1950s and 1960s was not
only legitimating the imperialism of the past but also reinforcing binary images against the new
enemy, the Soviet Union and its “primitive” economic form of communism. The tourist is the
key element…Middle -class families found access to suburbia and annual vacations in a Cold
War economy. Once they filled up on imagery from television and found the on-ramp to the
new Interstate Highway System, their journeys into the mythically imagined frontier Wild West
were virtually on autopilot.
Document 2: A Brief Contextualization of [Monuments] by John Neff, Jarod Roll, and Anne
Twitty
Monuments are statements of values and ideas, often honoring those who are believed to have
lived or died for the same values and ideals [as those who created it]…Those who erect
monuments are aware their values and ideals are contested…Every monument is designed and
built in a specific time and context, and therefore a part of, and a commentary on, its
contemporary social, political, cultural, intellectual, and economic environment.
Document 3: Pioneer Monuments in the American West
Cranial Exercises 2 [Final Exam]
This exam will consist of 1 question with several components.
The exam period begins at 8 a.m., but you will have until 11:59 p.m. tonight (December 16) to turn your final
into Dropbox. Please give yourself plenty of time to write, edit, cite, save your file, and upload your Final to
Dropbox. I will be available on Zoom (939 2693 1996) for a large portion of the official exam time (8 – 10
am.), and feel free to send me slack or email inquiries also. Read the directions precisely before you begin.
Final Documents:
Download the Final Exam. There are several documents that you will need to read and think about. This
assignment will also require that you use material from a variety of units to fully demonstrate
understanding. You are free to go back as far as you like, but don’t feel that you have to go back to the
beginning of the semester unless you feel it’s necessary.
When using the textbook, American Yawp, or the historical thinking documents you need to cite. If you use
material from the historical thinking documents then just cite thus – (HT 5, Doc 2). That would be historical
thinking 5, document 2. If you cite the American Yawp, then it would look like this, (AY, “Section Title,”
“Paragraph Number”).
Answer the following questions as they pertain to the documents and course material from lecture,
discussion, historical thinking assignments, and the American Yawp.
Final Questions:
The documents all relate to the building, use, and meaning of Pioneer monuments mostly in the 20th
century. This means you will need to think about “historical memory.” This is a concept that relates to how
we (as individuals and as a culture or cultural group) remember the past or choose to remember the past.
Question: After reading the material for the final, click the link to Pioneer Monuments that shows when,
where, and by whom the Pioneer monuments were built. Pick two monuments, one from before 1940 and
one after 1948 (time frames roughly 10 years) and explore those two monuments on the website. Next you
will want to use class material to think about why monuments and other sites were built and think about
what historical ideas the monument is represents with its imagery. That is, contextualize and historicize
(provide a rationale) why that specific era produced a particular type of Frontier monument.
Write a 1-2 page single spaced essay that argues, with evidence and context, the ways in which the two
monuments you selected depict the American frontier and why. Explain how historical memory and how
certain groups choose to remember the past reflected their thinking at the time of the monument’s
creation. Lastly, explain why you think these monuments may be contested regarding their depictions and
implicit historical ideas.
Format: single-spaced, Arial or Candara Font, 11 font size, 1” margins, citations (MLA or Chicago Style).