A Manufactured Wilderness: Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth, 1890–1960 (Architecture, Landscape and Amer Culture) - Hardcover

Abigail A. Van Slyck

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 081664876X ISBN 13: 9780816648764

Publisher: University of Minnesota Press, 2006

Synopsis

Since they were first established in the 1880s, children's summer camps have touched the lives of millions of people. Although the camping experience has a special place in the popular imagination, few scholars have given serious thought to this peculiarly American phenomenon. Why were summer camps created? What concerns and ideals motivated their founders? Whom did they serve? How did they change over time? What factors influenced their design? To answer these and many other questions, Abigail A. Van Slyck trains an informed eye on the most visible and evocative aspect of camp life: its landscape and architecture. She argues that summer camps delivered much more than a simple encounter with the natural world. Instead, she suggests, camps provided a man-made version of wilderness, shaped by middle-class anxieties about gender roles, class tensions, race relations, and modernity and its impact on the lives of children. Following a fascinating history of summer camps and a wide-ranging overview of the factors that led to their creation, Van Slyck examines the intersections of the natural landscape with human-built forms and social activities. In particular, she addresses changing attitudes toward such subjects as children's health, sanitation, play, relationships between the sexes, Native American culture, and evolving ideas about childhood. Generously illustrated with period photographs, maps, plans, and promotional images of camps throughout North America, A Manufactured Wilderness is the first book to offer a thorough consideration of the summer camp environment. (Architecture, Landscape, and American Culture Series.)

About this title

Synopsis:

Van Slyck (art history, Connecticut College) offers an architectural history of children's summer camps in North America from 1890-1960, while viewing the environment as something socially constructed for campers and their parents. She examines the camps' roles in the social construction of childhood, as they were part of a trend in the beginning o

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 081664876X
• ISBN 13: 9780816648764
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 296