Many Mountains to Tour: Survey of Cultural Icons in Tourist Sites of the Southern Tier

This paper presentation provides a survey of tourist sites in the Southern Tier of New York in an effort to document the kinds of cultural icons used to promote tourism. Meeting the challenge set by the conference theme, this presentation offers a fresh perspective of Appalachia by focusing on the emerging frontier of Appalachian Studies- that of Northern Appalachia. This part of the region, and specifically the Southern Tier of New York, has a creative and dynamic force shaping the local tourism industry. It is, subsequently, shaping local economies and politics, as well as representations of local communities. Sponsored by state-level officials and using celebrities, tourism promotion in the Southern Tier offers images of romantic vistas, culinary and vintner delights, and nostalgic by-ways of days by-gone. This presentation offers an analytic and often humorous account of the range of cultural icons at play in tourism sites of the Southern Tier. Tourism within Southern and Central Appalachia draws on a variety of class-based and occupational cultural icons ranging from the hillbilly to coal miners to artists and musicians and even to wealthy railroad tycoons. Other icons, like mountain retreats and refreshing waters, are more ecological. Comparing the kinds of icons found in tourist sites in New York’s Southern Tier to icons used in other parts of the Appalachian region might illuminate similar forces of cultural perceptions, similar patterns of recreational behavior, and shared values of tourists

Measuring the Known Realities of Regional Icons from the Possible Imaginings of Appalachian Art: Techniques for Learning and Teaching About Appalachian Art

This presentation explores various methodologies for measuring images and icons in Appalachian visual art. The methodologies presented are especially geared to be useful as teaching techniques in classroom exercises pertaining to visual culture studies. Scholars within Appalachian Studies work tirelessly to debunk and explain stereotypes of Appalachia. These scholars acknowledge discourse of Appalachia as a region of backwards, primitive, isolated, mountain folk is, instead, an invented, stereotyped reality. This “reality,” however, contributes to the formation and expression of personal identity, experience, and even livelihood of people of Appalachia. This connection to identity and experiences brings into focus the persuasiveness and consumability of icons. Research techniques useful to understand the persuasiveness of icons and featured in this presentation include content analysis of visual works, free listing, and place observation, among others. Employed in dissertation fieldwork conducted in an Appalachian tourist site, these research methodologies help to determine both the frequencies of icons and their associated meanings. In addition to exploring the merit and usefulness of visual culture methodologies, this presentation hopes to bridge the gap between fieldwork and the classroom by providing activities that enable students to practice these methods. For example, this presentation provides a classroom exercise that helps students to quantitatively and qualitatively identify patterns of subjects and themes of icons found in tourist paintings. Another exercise helps students to analyze data derived from free listing conducted with artists and tourists as they described their perceptions of Appalachia

Touring the Extremities of Culture in New York\u27s Southern Tier

This paper explores ideas of regionalism in the counties of New York’s Southern Tier- the extreme north of Appalachia. Connecting experiences of Appalachian New York places and culture to experiences of place and culture throughout the Appalachian region helps to solidify the importance of the Southern Tier in Appalachian Studies. The basic question this paper addresses is “How do the counties of New York’s Southern Tier culturally relate to the rest of Appalachia?” This question is motivated by a cultural anthropological interest in tourism and museum studies, as these industries essentialize, frame, and display human behavior, values, and material culture. Often what is believed to be important in a population’s culture is preserved and housed in museums. In turn, such collections are promoted by tourism developers. This conveys incomplete and contrived representations of local place and culture to visiting tourists. Museums as tourist attractions, then, are rich repositories for what is deemed important or interesting about a population by themselves and/or by others. Tourist attractions and museums are couched in economic, political, historical, geographic, and social dynamics that reveal much about the struggle of representation. Vigilance against chronic cultural misrepresentation of Central and Southern Appalachia remains strong in Appalachian Studies. In Northern Appalachia, however, cultural misrepresentation is less recognized. This paper is based on field research within tourist attractions and of visitor reviews of museums located in New York’s Southern Tier. Analysis show nostalgia, race, and class as underlying forces in depictions of local culture