Date of Award:
12-2009
Document Type:
Thesis
Degree Name:
Master of Arts (MA)
Department:
English
Department name when degree awarded
American Studies
Committee Chair(s)
Christopher Cokinos
Committee
Christopher Cokinos
Committee
Michael Sowder
Committee
Lawrence Culver
Abstract
This creative thesis is a braided narrative in which I explore the promised lands of Utah through my travels in the summer of 2008, the Cold War defense industry, and the early career of writer Edward Abbey. America's domestic and foreign policy shifts in the first decade of the Cold War contributed to the rise of modern environmentalism and to the creation of countless new religious movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s. To illustrate the cataclysmic upheavals of this era, each chapter of this thesis has been organized according to anthropologist Anthony F. C. Wallace's schema of revitalization movements. In both an historical and personal context, I investigate the tensions between freedom and preservation, between defense and vulnerability, and, ultimately, between solitude and community.
Checksum
eb7c5a07a4b44d5e6924e93e2933de68
Recommended Citation
Hilliard, Lyra, "Desert Solecisms: The Revitalization of Self and Community through Edward Abbey, the Cold War, and the Sacred Fire Circle" (2009). All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023. 481.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/481
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