ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the transmedial fandom that developed around Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series, and fan tourism to the “homesites,” the locations where her family lived, scattered across the U.S. Midwest. Wilder homesites function as both lieux de mémoire (“sites of memory”) and as lieux d’imagination (“places of the imagination”), serving as focal points for both collective memory (for white Americans) and collective imagination for her fans. Visitors and homesite staff see these locations as sites of the collective heritage of white settlers on the “frontier,” which make tangible a key chapter in American history and national identity. For fan visitors, the homesites are simultaneously places of imagination, where fans can connect to the storyworld’s characters, and extend how they imagine important scenes. Because the homesites also function as sites of collective memory and national history, however, they have become implicated in political conflicts, as American culture increasingly polarizes and many Americans have developed new understandings of white colonial settlement and Indigenous history. America’s political polarization and culture wars have affected the broader Wilder fandom, showing how media tourism sites can be drawn into debates about public history, if they also function as lieux de mémoire.
