Heritage on Stage

Book excerpt: The southwestern Wisconsin town of New Glarus--known internationally for its annual Wilhelm Tell festival, and for decades a favorite cultural destination of tourists and visitors to Wisconsin--comes vividly into focus in Steven D. Hoelscher's many-layered examination of the invention of ethnic place in "America's Little Switzerland." Drawing on sociology, social history, ethnic studies, performance studies, geography, and history, Hoelscher opens up a timely, richly informative and provocative discussion of the ways in which landscape, heritage, and the search for authenticity create identity in a unique ethnic American community. The questions Hoelscher raises about the politics of culture, the role of memory, and the willful manipulation of the past will fascinate historians, geographers, and scholars of stage performance and cultural studies, and are sure to stimulate and challenge all readers interested in Wisconsin history. Both a sensitive portrait of a living community's special identity and a probing exploration of the ways this identity is invented, presented for the public, and sustained, Heritage on Stage is a ground-breaking work and a significant contribution toward the understanding of our nation's perception of itself and its ethnicity.