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Article: Meeting places, intersections, crossroads, and borders: toward a complex western cultural history.(trends of frontier literature)
- Article from:
- The Historian
- Article date:
- September 22, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Phi Alpha Theta, History Honor Society, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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IN 1893, historian Frederick Jackson Turner set off a century-long definitional dilemma when he declared that the frontier was "the meeting point between savagery and civilization." Since that time, historians, journalists, novelists, filmmakers, and a host of others have joined the explanatory fray. During these decades, interpreters have described the frontier and the American West, among other delineations, as a meeting point, a zone of contact, a boundary line, a border, or a crossroads. But much needs to be done in studying the complexities of the western past. One rewarding approach is to examine cultures that met and interacted in the West. Studies of these contacts ...