The War Comes to Southwest Virginia: The Civil War History Mobile and Touristic Experience in Appalachia

Through a rhetorical analysis of the Virginia Civil War History Mobile, in the first part of my presentation I outline the primary narrative threads of Civil War memory during the 150th anniversary of the Civil War (2011-2015), including an emphasis on battle, the recuperation of the experiences of slaves, and reflection on the contemporary legacy of the Civil War. I argue that the Virginia Commission’s initiatives that spanned the state framed Virginia as the forerunner in the creation of Civil War memory through tourism. As a result, tourism becomes a primary means through which visitors confront the past, raising questions of how the consumptive nature of tourism influences how locations are defined (see the scholarship of Marita Sturken, Mary Louis Pratt, Dean MacCannell). Tourism, therefore, tends to erase ideological conflict in favor of generically acceptable narratives. As a result, the second part of my analysis anchors the History Mobile at a stop in Appalachia— specifically Abingdon, Virginia—to demonstrate that the History Mobile’s narratives counter local narratives, which do not focus on the Civil War as “the central event in Virginia’s history,” as the History Mobile asserts. Instead, Abingdon is historically anchored in frontier and Revolutionary War narratives. Abingdon is also culturally anchored through Heartwood, a crafts-focused visitors center and store that is self-described as the “Southwest Virginia Artisan Gateway.” Abingdon, therefore, demonstrates how tourism constructs regional Appalachian identity. The disjuncture between the History Mobile’s assertion of Civil War identity and Abingdon’s assertion of frontier and artisan identity represents how tourist experience is commodified from outside and inside the region