<P> Many believed that the end of the frontier represented the beginning of a new stage in American life and that the United States must expand overseas . However, others viewed this interpretation as the impetus for a new wave in the history of United States imperialism . William Appleman Williams led the "Wisconsin School" of diplomatic historians by arguing that the frontier thesis encouraged American overseas expansion, especially in Asia, during the 20th century . Williams viewed the frontier concept as a tool to promote democracy through both world wars, to endorse spending on foreign aid, and motivate action against totalitarianism . However, Turner's work, in contrast to Roosevelt's work The Winning of the West, places greater emphasis on the development of American republicanism than on territorial conquest . Other historians, who wanted to focus scholarship on minorities, especially Native Americans and Hispanics, started in the 1970s to criticize the frontier thesis because it did not attempt to explain the evolution of those groups . Indeed, their approach was to reject the frontier as an important process and to study the West as a region, ignoring the frontier experience east of the Mississippi River . </P> <P> Turner never published a major book on the frontier for which he did 40 years of research . However his ideas presented in his graduate seminars at Wisconsin and Harvard influenced many areas of historiography . In the history of religion, for example, Boles (1993) notes that William Warren Sweet at the University of Chicago Divinity School as well as Peter G. Mode (in 1930), argued that churches adapted to the characteristics of the frontier, creating new denominations such as the Mormons, the Church of Christ, the Disciples of Christ, and the Cumberland Presbyterians . The frontier, they argued, shaped uniquely American institutions such as revivals, camp meetings, and itinerant preaching . This view dominated religious historiography for decades . Moos (2002) shows that the 1910s to 1940s black filmmaker and novelist Oscar Micheaux incorporated Turner's frontier thesis into his work . Micheaux promoted the West as a place where blacks could transcend race and earn economic success through hard work and perseverance . </P> <P> Slatta (2001) argues that the widespread popularization of Turner's frontier thesis influenced popular histories, motion pictures, and novels, which characterize the West in terms of individualism, frontier violence, and rough justice . Disneyland's Frontierland of the mid to late 20th century reflected the myth of rugged individualism that celebrated what was perceived to be the American heritage . The public has ignored academic historians' anti-Turnerian models, largely because they conflict with and often destroy the icons of Western heritage . However, the work of historians during the 1980s--1990s, some of whom sought to bury Turner's conception of the frontier, and others who sought to spare the concept but with nuance, have done much to place Western myths in context and rescue Western history from them . </P> <P> Subsequent critics, historians, and politicians have suggested that other' frontiers,' such as scientific innovation, could serve similar functions in American development . Historians have noted that John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s explicitly called upon the ideas of the frontier . At his acceptance speech upon securing the Democratic Party nomination for U.S. president on July 15, 1960, Kennedy called out to the American people, "I am asking each of you to be new pioneers on that New Frontier . My call is to the young in heart, regardless of age--to the stout in spirit, regardless of party ." Mathiopoulos notes that he "cultivated this resurrection of frontier ideology as a motto of progress (' getting America moving') throughout his term of office ." He promoted his political platform as the "New Frontier," with a particular emphasis on space exploration and technology . Limerick points out that Kennedy assumed that "the campaigns of the Old Frontier had been successful, and morally justified ." The "frontier" metaphor thus maintained its rhetorical ties to American social progress . The frontier thesis is one of the most influential documents on the American west today . </P>

Briefly explain one american identity resulting from the frontier experience