| This paper explores the problem of identity construction. The people, places, stories, and symbols associated with Cross Village, Michigan are used as a case study to demonstrate how communities orient themselves toward re-imagined aspects of their shared history to create an identity. This project employs historical and historiographical methods through the lens of religious studies to conduct an examination of the influences of memory, space, and myth on selective interpretations of historical events and people. The landscape, names, and memories of places change. Consequently, how place is identified and how people identify with place also change. The current residents of Cross Village have romanticized a particular reading of their past which has been reaffirmed through the process of collective memory and mythmaking. This caused the manufacture and development of nostalgia as self identity. Their notion of self is socially defined through the power and organization of language, history, and memory. |
