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Full-Text Articles in American Studies

Visionaries Of The American West : Mari Sandoz And Her Four Plains Protagonists, Lisa Rae Lindell Oct 2016

Visionaries Of The American West : Mari Sandoz And Her Four Plains Protagonists, Lisa Rae Lindell

Lisa R. Lindell

The authorial reputation of Mari Sandoz has long rested in the shadow of other writers of her era. First of all, Sandoz wrote from and about a relatively remote region of the United States. In addition, she firmly refused to produce popular works at the expense of sacrificing the truth she perceived and wished to express. Consequently, Sandoz has often been classified as a regional writer and her works have been overlooked by many readers and critics. Her status as a woman, her unconventional writing style, point of view, and subject matter, and the blending of historical and fictional elements …


Bringing Books To A "Book-Hungry Land": Print Culture On The Dakota Prairie, Lisa Lindell Mar 2016

Bringing Books To A "Book-Hungry Land": Print Culture On The Dakota Prairie, Lisa Lindell

Lisa R. Lindell

The dearth of reading material was a recurring lament in the writings and memoirs of Dakota settlers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. “I was born with a desire to read, . . . and I have never gotten over it,” declared Henry Theodore Washburn, recalling his Minnesota boyhood and homesteading years in Dakota Territory, “but there was no way in those days to gratify that desire to any great extent.”1 This lack was indeed of consequence. In the pre-electronic era, print was a primary means of obtaining information, insight, and pleasure. High rates of literacy, sharp increases …


"So Long As I Can Read": Farm Women's Reading Experiences In Depression-Era South Dakota, Lisa Lindell Feb 2016

"So Long As I Can Read": Farm Women's Reading Experiences In Depression-Era South Dakota, Lisa Lindell

Lisa R. Lindell

During the Great Depression, with conditions grim, entertainment scarce, and educational opportunities limited, many South Dakota farm women relied on reading to fill emotional, social, and informational needs. To read to any degree, these rural women had to overcome multiple obstacles. Extensive reading (whether books, farm journals, or newspapers) was limited to those who had access to publications and could make time to read. The South Dakota Free Library Commission was valuable in circulating reading materials to the state's rural population. In the 1930s the commission collaborated with the USDA's Extension Service in a popular reading project geared toward South …


Conquering A Wilderness: Destruction And Development On The Great Plains In Mari Sandoz's Old Jules, Lisa Lindell Jan 2016

Conquering A Wilderness: Destruction And Development On The Great Plains In Mari Sandoz's Old Jules, Lisa Lindell

Lisa R. Lindell

Jules Ami Sandoz came to America in 1881 at the age of 22. Following a three-year sojourn in northeastern Nebraska, he headed further west, settling in the recently surveyed region northwest of the Nebraska Sandhills. In Old Jules, the biography of her pioneer father, Mari Sandoz presented a character filled with conflicts and contradictions. Pitted against Jules's dynamic vision of community growth was his self-centered and destructive nature. Well aware of the more unsavory qualities exhibited by her father. Sandoz nonetheless maintained that he and others like him were necessary to the development of the West. This recognition did not …