Publication Date

2025

Advisor(s) - Committee Chair

Alexander Olson, Jennifer Hanley, Katherine Lennard

Degree Program

Department of History

Degree Type

Master of Arts

Abstract

Lost River Cave and Valley is a popular tourist attraction in Bowling Green, Kentucky, that also holds historical significance and importance to the local community. The Cave and Valley have functioned as a business, place of leisure, green space, and place of work for over 200 years. This thesis will explore the different ways that humans and non-humans have worked together to create a sense of place in this natural space. This will be accomplished utilizing “assemblage” theory from the discipline of philosophy. These assemblages will be made up of oral history interviews completed in 1999, one from 2009, and several original interviews up to the present. Along with oral histories, I will reframe the way that non-human actors are included in the act of placemaking at Lost River Cave. My aim is to add to the expanding methodologies in the field of environmental history by using a local space to convey how to find stories that treat both humans and non-humans as meaningful historical actors.

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | Cultural History | History | Other History | Public History

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