Day

November 11, 2022

(Re)Writing the West

Panel proposed at the 2023 ASLE + AESS Conference: “Reclaiming the Commons”

July 9-12, 2023 in Portland, Oregon

Public lands in the US West are palimpsests of signs, including pictographs, inscriptions, benchmarks, boundary signage, interpretive signage, trail registries, geocaches, maps, field guides, literary texts, and more. These signs and traces of Indigenous inhabitation, colonialism from Spanish, Mormon, and other Euroamerican settlers, diasporic dwellings and departures tear and wrinkle these spaces into both literary and literal topographies. During their first century under public management, these lands ...