American Studies Commons^™

Reproduction And Population Characteristics Of White-Tailed Jackrabbits In South Dakota, Charles Dieter, Dustin Schaible

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

We evaluated the reproductive biology of314 white-tailed jackrabbits (Lepus townsendii) in 44 counties throughout South Dakota from June 2004 to September 2005. We classified jackrabbits as juveniles or adults based on the closure of the proximal epiphysis of the humerus using X-ray analysis. We determined annual reproductive activity through fluctuations in measured weights of reproductive organs for both sexes. The 2005 breeding season started in late February and proceeded until mid-July, approximately 142 days, allowing for females to potentially produce 3.3 litters. We found four distinct breeding periods by the overlap of estimated conception and parturition dates. Mean …

Review Of The Gospel Of Sustainability: Media, Market, And Lohas. By Monica M. Emerich, Toby A. Ten Eyck

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

It is no longer enough to grow your own food to be considered environmentally conscious. According to Emerich in The Gospel of Sustainability, being green means driving a hydrogen-powered car, patronizing businesses that sell free-trade coffee, and subscribing to the proper magazines. Emerich provides a backstage pass (as well as front-stage views in the form of quotes from conferences and media stories) where one can view how the conflicts around sustainability arose and are maintained as various actors try both to meld and tear apart capitalism and wanton consumerism, desiring to live lives that will translate into more resources for …

Review Of Winnipeg Beach: Leisure And Courtship In A Resort Town, 1900-1967. By Dale Barbour., Pauline Greenhill

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Manitoba's answer to such waterside attractions as Coney Island and Blackpool, Winnipeg Beach saw tremendous social change over the nearly 70 years Dale Barbour explores. The dates correspond to "the lifespan of Winnipeg Beach as a tourist destination, from its creation by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in 1901 to the demolition of its dance hall, roller coaster, and boardwalk in 1967." Barbour traces the complexities of the town's development as a primarily heterosocial space for socializing and as a destination for families; its meaning as a paradoxical mixing of nature and culture; and its class and ethnic associations (in …

Review Of Alberta's Day Care Controversy: From 1908 To 2009-And Beyond. By Tom Langford., Gordon Cleveland

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

This is a carefully crafted, meticulously researched gem of a book exploring the history and intrigues of Alberta's controversies and struggles concerning child care, focused on the period since the 1960s. It is a work of historical sociology analyzing the interaction of social and political forces in Alberta clashing over the effects of child care in promoting changes in women's roles, over the negative effects of commercial child care on quality, and over the appropriate amount and type of support that governments vs. families should provide for child care. That description may make it sound too analytical and boring, but …

Review Of Two Toms: Lessons From A Shoshone Doctor. By Thomas H. Johnson And Helen S. Johnson., Christopher Loether

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Thomas H. Johnson, one of the co-authors of Two Toms: Lessons from a Shoshone Doctor, was a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign when he first met Tom Wesaw in 1966 at a Sun Dance on the Wind River Reservation. Johnson returned to live with Wesaw during 1969-1970, in order to learn about Shoshone language and culture. Two Toms is based on his field notes from that stay. Tom Wesaw (1886-1973) was a traditional Shoshone doctor, Sun Dance leader, and member of the Native American (Peyote) Church. He had left Wind River Reservation when only fifteen …

Review Of Texas Through Women's Eyes: The Twentieth-Century Experience By Judith N. Mcarthur And Harold L. Smith, Jean A. Stuntz

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Texas Through Women's Eyes tells the story of twentieth-century Texans who are mostly left out of Texas history texts. Including women of all races and social classes, the book is arranged to make it especially useful for college classes, but is written in a manner non-academics can enjoy. Each of its four chronological parts (1900-1920, 1920-1945, 1945-1965, and 1965-2000) begins with a lively narrative broken down into several topics, accompanied by a suggested reading list, and ends with a selection of documents pertaining closely to the narrative.

Part 1, "Social Reform and Suffrage in the Progressive Era, 1900-1920," effectively links …

Review Of Empire Of The Summer Moon: Quanah Parker And The Rise And Fall Of The Comanches, The Most Powerful Indian Tribe In American History By S. C. Gwynne, Joseph A. Stout Jr.

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

By 1836, white settlement had moved steadily westward into the Southern Plains, confronting nomadic Indians and leading to increasing violence between the two. When Nokoni Comanches that year attacked Fort Parker-a stockaded fort in east central Texas-they killed or captured white settlers, nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker numbered among them. Parker survived to become the wife of Peta Nocona, a Comanche warrior known for his hatred of whites and ferocity in battle. She bore him children, including Quanah Parker.

Review Of Working The Land: The Stories Of Ranch And Farm Women In The Modern American West By Sandra K. Schackel, Mary Zeiss Stange

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In 1995 Sandra Schackel, then professor of history at Boise State University, was asked to contribute a chapter about rural women's experiences to an anthology on the post World War II American West. The research Schackel accumulated for that chapter, largely in the form of interviews of farm- and ranchwives, provided the foundation for this slender volume. It is a foundation upon which she did relatively little to build. While her oral historical approach suggests some tantalizing avenues for further exploration, they remain for the most part rural roads not taken.

Review Of Empires, Nations, And Families: A History Of The North American West, 1800-1860 By Anne F. Hyde, Walter Nugent

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This extraordinary book is a recasting and retelling of virtually the entire history of the trans-Mississippi West from 1804 to about 1860. Its solid source foundation ranges from early fur-trade documents to the most recent monographs. It is amply illustrated with rarely seen visuals from many archives and replete with scores of real women and men-AngloAmerican, French, Native, and Metis. The focus is on family connections-marital, sexual, social, economic-and the crossing of racial boundaries and networks. Women are never absent, and their agency is evident. Every chapter opens with a vignette about a family member-man, woman, or child.

Review Of Writing In Dust: Reading The Prairie Environmentally By Jenny Kerber, Aubrey Streit Krug

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

When do the prairies begin in history? And are they now in danger of ending? Jenny Kerber notes that settler cultures have relied upon two narratives to understand the Great Plains of North America. The first is about how history begins on the prairie when it is recultivated as an Edenic garden; the second is about how that garden falls from grace into a barren wasteland.

Kerber opens up these Western, Christian traditions for interdisciplinary critique. By considering ecological, feminist, Indigenous, and other marginalized perspectives, she explores "how different stories might contribute to a vision of sustainable dwelling on the …

Review Of All Indians Do Not Live In Teepees (Or Casinos) By Catherine C. Robbins, Bruce E. Johansen

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Catherine C. Robbins's highly personal tour of contemporary Indian Country begins with a moving description of 2,000 sets of human remains being returned from Harvard University "to the people of the Pecos Pueblo and their kin at Jemez" in 1999. The book then degenerates into a long rant of pet peeves that annoy its author.

Robbins's portrait of Indian casinos is not flattering (their glitziness spoils reservation vistas, she says). She doesn't think Indians dignify themselves by lecturing whites about sovereignty. In Robbins's view, Indians practicing their hunting and fishing rights under treaties bring an unwelcome din to the streams …

Review Of Women Writers Of The American West, 1833-1927 By Nina Baym, Jim Hoy

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The Great Plains, particularly in pioneer times, has been described as a place that was good for men and dogs but hell on women and horses, a notion that could be extended to the American West as a whole. In other words, the West was a man's country, initially explored by men, settled by men, written about by men. Nina Baym, however, well documents the inaccuracy of this last point in Women Writers of the American West.

Following an introductory chapter, nine chapters divide the West into nine geographic regions, each of these offering brief descriptions of the hundreds of …

Review Of West Of 98: Living And Writing The New American West Edited By Lynn Stegner And Russell Rowland, Matthew J. C. Cella

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

West of 98 is an ambitious and comprehensive collection of personal essays and poems by over sixty contributors who work to define the parameters of the American West: the vast and complex region west of the 98th meridian. As Lynn Stegner explains in the collection's introduction, the goal of the book is to offer a "Greek chorus that might define, remark upon, and otherwise characterize the West as each of [the writers] grew to know it, and equally important, the West that is still becoming." The chorus of voices featured in the collection reflects a broad range of cultural and …

Review Of State Of Minds: Texas Culture And Its Discontents By Don Graham, Ken Baake

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Don Graham sets out in State of Minds to address two threats he sees to the literary landscape of Texas: one, the perception that Texas culture, if it exists at all, is inconsequential and "lowbrow"; and, two, that college students even within Texas are becoming illiterate in regards to their state's rich heritage of creative fiction and nonfiction writing and film. The book succeeds on both counts, reminding readers familiar with the canon of how much fun it is to enter the world of Texas's written and film literature and how much one can learn from it about the timeless …

Great Plains Quarterly Volume 32 / Number 2 / Spring 2012

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Contents

Book Reviews

Notes and News

Farm Women, Solidarity, And The Suffrage Messenger Nebraska Suffrage Activism On The Plains, 1915-1917, Carmen Heider

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In the weeks and months following the November 3, 1914, vote on the Nebraska suffrage amendment, activists picked up the pieces after male voters for the third time defeated the proposition in their state. Thomas Coulter explains that in the days leading up to the vote, ''A feeling of impending victory suffused the hearts of pro-suffrage workers," but in the days after, "a sense of shock was widespread."¹ The vote had been close: 90,738 for the Nebraska amendment and 100,842 against it.² In fact, Attorney General Willis Reed later stated that had there been a recount, the amendment …

Review Of The Big Empty: The Great Plains In The Twentieth Century By R. Douglas Hurt, Thomas G. Andrews

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The Big Empty: The Great Plains in the Twentieth Century endeavors to synthesize a history that is as almost as vast and challenging as the region itself. Not surprisingly, R. Douglas Hurt succeeds most fully when addressing his specialty, agricultural history. Less masterful but still effective are the book's sections concerning energy development, Plains Indians, Latinos, and political economy. The Big Empty has little to say, by contrast, about shifting perceptions of the Plains, the decline of railroads, and the rise of federal highways, while Hurt's insistence on the fundamental stasis of the Plains environment seems to contradict the many …

Not Your Family Farm Apiculture In South,Central Montana, Miles Lewis

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The rolling prairies and sheltering mountain ranges of the Upper Musselshell Valley in Montana are nearly perfect for cattle and sheep grazing. Some areas, more topographically similar to the Great Plains than to the mountainous West, are (at least in wet years) highly conducive to growing alfalfa or wheat. Overall, the pastoral setting calls to mind images of weathered cowboys, grizzled sheepherders, and stoic farmers. However, closer inquiry into the region's agriculture reveals that cattle and wheat are by no means the only product being harvested from the land. Found buzzing around flowering foliage or swarming the rearing hindquarters of …

Great Plains Research Volume 22, Number 1 Spring 2012--Editorial Matter

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Cover

Masthead

Table of contents

News and Notes

INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

inside this issue

Mapping Burned Areas In The Flint Hills Of Kansas And Oklahoma, 2000-2010, Rhett L. Mohler, Douglas G. Goodin

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Prescribed burning is commonly used to prevent succession oftallgrass prairie to woody vegetation, which preserves the prairie's value to ranching and native wildlife. However, burning has negative effects as well, including potentially harming wildlife and releasing pollutants into the atmosphere. Research concerning the effects of fire on vegetation dynamics, wildlife, and air quality would benefit greatly from maps of burned areas in the Flint Hills, as no reliable quantification of burned areas currently exists. We used Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite imagery to map burned areas in the Flint Hills for each year from 2000 to 2010. Our maps …