| Descript |
225 p |
| Note |
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-02, Section: A, page: 0743 |
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Adviser: Patricia Hilden |
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Berkeley, 2006 |
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The main inquiry of this project is: How do people's identities evolve over time in a particular place and how do visual representations of those identities function within that same space? My dissertation focuses on three identity tropes prevalent in New Mexico: Spanish legacy, tricultural harmony and the cultural commodification of Indian peoples. I analyze three sites of visual cultural representation: statue memorializations, murals and billboards that correlate to the identities. Borrowing from Gramscian and Althusserian (among numerous others) notions about ideology and how hegemonic power functions within the identity formation process, I ask how visual culture in our lived landscape reflects and informs relationships based on the domination (political, social, economic) of one group above another. The interdisciplinary nature of this dissertation allows me to first explore the New Mexico historical archive, looking carefully at the trends in writing that describe the place and its inhabitants from Spanish colonization through the present. Once this foundation is established, I move to a spatial analysis of the ways race and gender get inscribed in visual imagery that becomes iconic and is thus employed by agents of the state to promote New Mexico---and its residents---for the tourism industry that has become one of the state's leading economic forces. I am concerned with the ways "difference," primarily race, but also gender, are heavily relied upon as lures for tourists---at the expense of those communities being toured |
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School code: 0028 |
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DDC |
| Host Item |
Dissertation Abstracts International 68-02A
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| Subject |
American Studies
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History, Latin American
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Geography
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Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies
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0323
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0336
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0366
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0631
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| Alt Author |
University of California, Berkeley
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