The Haunted West
The Haunted West
Memory and Commemoration at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West
Drawing upon the mythic figure of William F. Cody, or “Buffalo Bill,” the Buffalo Bill Center of the West (BBCW) is complex of five museums in Cody, Wyoming, that celebrate the “spirit of the West.” The authors of The Haunted West use the BBCW as a prism through which readers can view the center’s complex ethos: Anglo-American guilt along with a reverence for Native American culture, a sacred and sublime vision of the region embodied in Western art, a vexed celebration of the West’s endangered natural resources, and the ever-presence of violence in the weaponry on display.
The BBCW includes the Buffalo Bill Museum, the Plains Indian Museum, the Whitney Western Art Museum, the Draper Museum of Natural History, and the Cody Firearms Museum. The Haunted Westexplores the way that the multiple histories of the American West in these installations disrupt and erupt into the present, like apparitions whose forgotten and suppressed stories return to contest and unsettle familiar contemporary narratives.
Through the powerful interplay of presence and absence in its displays, the ethos of the center functions as a haunt for American identity even as it is haunted by horrors of the nation’s colonial past. A product of two decades of work, The Haunted West offers a rich interpretive approach to memory spaces everywhere, and museums in particular.
‘The Haunted West is thoughtfully researched and well written, and its organization—critiquing each museum on its own—gives the sense of leading the reader through the center. The authors have done an excellent job of updating their analyses as the museums have updated, while their addition of the unifying themes of ‘spirit’ and ‘haunt’ provides a provocative new theoretical lens to the field.’ —Elizabeth Weiser, author of Museum Rhetoric: Building Civic Identity in National Spaces
Greg Dickinson is chair of the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University. He is author of Suburban Dreams: Imagining and Building the Good Life.
Eric Aoki is professor of communication studies at Colorado State University. His scholarship has appeared in several journals.
Brian L. Ott is distinguished professor of communication and media at Missouri State University. He is coauthor of Critical Media Studies: An Introduction.
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Approaching the Buffalo Bill Center of the West
Chapter 1. The Place and History of the BBCW
Chapter 2. Reflections on Theory and Method
Chapter 3. The Ghost of William F. Cody at the Buffalo Bill Museum
Chapter 4. Reverence and Survivance at the Plains Indian Museum
Chapter 5. The Sacred Hymn of the Whitney Western Art Museum
Chapter 6. Constructing the Master Naturalist
Chapter 7. New Modes of “How (Not) to See Guns” at the Cody Firearms Museum
Conclusion: Living by the Spirit
Notes
Bibliography
Index
