Figuring the Landscape: The Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument and the Contested Terrain of American Historical Memory

My dissertation critically examines the formation and contested signification of The Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument from its establishment as a Battlefield Cemetery in 1881 until the dedication of its Indian Memorial in 2003. Taking my cue from civil rights activists such as Means and a growing number of scholars in Art History, Social Geography as well as Visual, American, and Postcolonial Studies, I analyze the social construction of The Little Bighorn Battlefield to describe the ways in which it continues to give form to the social and political conflicts over its place within various forms of American historical memory. Although within the vast library of Custer texts there are a number which deal with the history and social significance of the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, little critical attention has been paid to the spatial characteristics of the monument itself. Historical studies such as those found in Edward Tabor Linenthal's, Sacred Ground, Americans and their Battlefields (1993) and Jerome Green's Stricken Field, the Little Bighorn since 1976 (2008) have shown how the ongoing debates over the Battle of the Little Bighorn and its legacy have affected the social significance and interpretative aims of the National Monument over time. Other scholars such as Brian Dippie and more recently Michael Elliot have demonstrated that The Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument is but a part of a much larger media culture devoted to the battle and its legacy. My own thesis owes much to this rich body of criticism, but my focus on the complex spatial systems historically used to match, educate and influence visitors' experience of the site gives new dimensions to this growing field of scholarship.