DeLyser, Dydia 1965(?)-

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DeLyser, Dydia 1965(?)-

PERSONAL:

Born c. 1965. Education: Syracuse University, Ph.D., 1998.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803. E-mail—dydia@lsu.edu.

CAREER:

Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, associate professor of geography. Cochair, Qualitative Research Specialty Group, Association of American Geographers, 2005—.

AWARDS, HONORS:

B.P. Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching, 2004; Phi Kappa Phi Award for Outstanding Untenured Faculty Member in the Social Sciences and Humanities, Louisiana State University, 2005; Globe Book Award, Association of American Geographers, 2005.

WRITINGS:

Ramona Memories: Tourism and the Shaping of Southern California, University of Minnesota Press (Minneapolis, MN), 2005.

Historical Geography, coeditor, 1999—; Annals of the Association of American Geographers, editorial board member, 2004—; Journal of Historical Geography, editorial board member, 2005—; Geographical Review, associate editor, 2006—. Contributor to journals, including Journal of Historical Geography, Geographical Review, and Annals of the Association of American Geographers.

SIDELIGHTS:

Dydia DeLyser's Ramona Memories: Tourism and the Shaping of Southern California explores the influence of a work of fiction in creating the region's identity and luring visitors there. That work of fiction is Ramona, a novel by Helen Hunt Jackson, published in 1884. The title character is a young woman, half Indian, half Scottish, living in California ranch country in the early nineteenth century, before California was part of the United States. Jackson wrote Ramona to call attention to the discrimination and difficulties faced by Native Americans, but readers were less interested in social commentary than in the story's picturesque setting and tragic romance—and these were the factors that, according to DeLyser, drew many of them to Southern California and created a nostalgia for a mythical past.

Soon after the book's publication, DeLyser notes, sites were designated as the location of Ramona's home, her birth, her wedding, and her grave—all this for a fictional character. DeLyser discusses these and other Ramona-linked locales, both their real history and their associations with the story. She also notes that Ramona's name was used on housing developments, cosmetics, fruit boxes, even a theme park. Various women claimed to be the model for Ramona. There were stage adaptations of the story, and in 1910 D.W. Griffith made a film of it, starring Mary Pickford. Ramona, DeLyser writes, became "the most important woman in the history of southern California." The growth of Ramona-related tourism, she notes, was helped along by railroads and, eventually, automobiles, which made travel accessible to an increasing number of Americans.

DeLyser also goes into how Jackson's gender may have affected perceptions of the novel—romance and local color were seen as acceptable topics for women writers, but serious social issues were not. She further reports that while the book is largely unknown today, its popularity lasted through several decades and hundreds of printings, and its influence was still evident in the 1950s, when Los Angeles freeway developers provisionally named two sections of the system after Ramona and her doomed lover, Alessandro.

Several critics praised Ramona Memories as an extensively researched, well-written meditation on the power of fiction to create fact. "DeLyser uses an impressive array of source material, including tourist guidebooks, postcards, souvenir albums, and travel brochures," observed Jennifer Helzer in the Geographical Review. Helzer continued: "The writing is accessible to a wide audience, and the author is particularly adept at distilling the connections between literary tourism, fictional landscapes, and the construction of regional identity. The book is innovative in approach and method." Richard Woodward, writing in the New York Times, found the book a "fascinating account" of Ramona's role in bringing tourists to Southern California. "Novels and movies," he related, "are more critical than three-star motel reviews in triggering that initial step on any journey."

Casey Wendt, reviewing DeLyser's book for H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, thought the author may have exaggerated the novel's importance. While significant, Wendt wrote, the story "did not single-handedly shape the way in which southern Californians understood their past." Wendt explained: "Given little attention by DeLyser … is the issue of power in the creation of social memory, as well as the numerous and diverse factors that contributed to the prevalence of southern California's nostalgic past," adding that "at times the author seems herself swept up in the romanticism of the Ramona myth." Wendt did consider Ramona Memories "a light and easy read for anyone interested in Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona, or the creation of a unique and interesting tourist niche in southern California … but not as useful as one would have hoped as an academic analysis of social memory and tourism."

Helzer, however, predicted Ramona Memories would be useful to scholars of historical and cultural geography, tourism, and heritage studies, as well as lay readers "interested in all things Californian" or in the implications DeLyser's findings might have for other locales. The book, Helzer wrote, "will inspire new ways to think about the role of literature in the construction of place" and "will contribute significantly to an examination of the connection between landscape, culture, and collective memory."