Cultural History Commons^™

An 1858 Patent Office Report: The Joy Of Being Wrong, John M. Rudy

Interpreting the Civil War: Connecting the Civil War to the American Public

I love being wrong. I think every historian should love that feeling. Finding that one small piece of evidence that puts a crack in your perception of the past and makes you restructure your view of the flow of history is a joy.

I had one of those moments a few weeks ago at Adams County Historical Society, digging through the vertical files for random things. I go digging every week or so, simply immersing myself in the raw material of the past and seeing what floats to the surface. [excerpt]

Psu Report, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

After reading the summaries and commentaries on the Freeh Report detailing the elements of scandal at Penn State University, I am surprised that I am surprised by what has been revealed. My cynicism after nearly a half century of involvement with administrators at institutions of higher education and bloated athletic programs should have left me immune to both the surprise and disgust that this affair had evoked in me. What has not surprised me is the deviousness of the principal players in this scandal, the cynicism with which they approached the issues, and the continuing reaction to it all.

M'Er F'Ing History: Speaking In Our Audience's Language, John M. Rudy

Interpreting the Civil War: Connecting the Civil War to the American Public

I was talking to Jake the other night about Cookie Monster. Really, we were talking about the theory behind Cookie Monster's latest strategic move and how we could all learn a thing or two from him. Which move was that? The short, furry blue monster's brilliant foray into pop culture with "Share It Maybe," the music video parody of Carly Rae Jepsen's song "Call Me Maybe." In one day, Cookie has racked up 2.3 million hits on the less-than-four-minute video. [excerpt]

Nelson, James S. (Fa 161), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text scan of paper (Click on “Additional Files” below) for Folklife Archives Project 161. This collection contains a master’s thesis entitled “Hillbilly Music and Early Live Radio Programming In Bowling Green and Glasgow, Kentucky: Country Music as a Local Phenomenon,” written by James Nelson in January 1994 for the department of Modern Languages and Intercultural Studies at Western Kentucky University. Also included is a cassette tape of old-time music from south central Kentucky entitled “Railroad Through the Smoky Mountains,” by Jim Bowles, as well as an obituary for Jonell F. Simunick.

Guest Post: John Rambo Fights The Civil War, Aaron Urbanski

Interpreting the Civil War: Connecting the Civil War to the American Public

Today we offer another of our “Guest Post Wednesday” extras, with some meditations on Rambo from Aaron Urbanski. Yeah, we’re not kidding... Rambo. Aaron is a graduate of the GMU American History Masters program and alumnus Ranger of the NPS. [excerpt]

Wimbledon, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

The term “historic” is often used in describing any number of sporting events. It is sometimes used to exaggerate the significance of an event, often in order to promote it. There are times, though, when the term is not only appropriate, but indeed, required. The Gentleman’s Final at Wimbledon today was historic in a number of ways.

Ring The Bells: "Happy 149th Birthday, America!", John M. Rudy

Interpreting the Civil War: Connecting the Civil War to the American Public

Friend of the blog and stalwart DC area historian Aaron Urbanski posted a pithy update to his Facebook wall on Monday, a status update which has infected my brain over the past couple days. The idea is so infectious, so amazingly simple yet profound that I'm shamelessly stealing it and blowing it up to epic proportions. [excerpt]

Launching Through The Surf: The Dory Fleet Of Pacific City, Cassidy Davis, Jennifer Layton

2012 Projects

The Keck Summer Collaborative Research Program provides opportunities for Linfield College students and faculty to conduct research on issues related to the Pacific Northwest, and to bring the research findings back into the classroom within the subsequent academic year. Students partner with faculty to conduct research and present their work to other students, Linfield staff and faculty, and community members during a series of brown bag lunches. Cassidy Davis and Jennifer Layton conducted research with Tyrone Marshall and gave this presentation during the summer of 2012.

This phase of Launching through the Surf: The Dory Fleet of Pacific City consists …

Review Of Prairie Fire: A Great Plains History By Julie Courtwright, Ted Binnema

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The scholarly literature on the history of fire has proliferated over the last generation or so, but until now we have lacked a general history of prairie fire. Julie Courtwright fills this gap. She explains that she hopes "to open a wider discussion of prairie fire and to foster recognition of its environmental and social influence on the Great Plains, thereby broadening the larger history of fire and of the American West." That statement of purpose hints at the intended contributions of the book; Courtwright does not offer many interpretations and arguments that will surprise those familiar with the scholarly …

"I Fear The Consequences To Our Animals": Emigrants And Their Livestock On The Overland Trails, Diana L. Ahmad

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

"You cannot be too careful of your teams; on their condition depends entirely your success in getting through" to the Pacific coast, warned Philip L. Platt and N. Slater in their 1852 Travelers' Guide across the Plains upon the Overland Route to California.¹ The diaries, letters, and guidebooks written by the emigrants who crossed North America on the overland trails during the mid-nineteenth century reveal a new awareness of the animals that journeyed with them. Often written as advice to those who might follow them, the travelers worried about their animals in ways beyond what theologians and philosophers …

Review Of Texas, New Mexico, And The Compromise Of 1850: Boundary Dispute And Sectional Crisis By Mark J. Stegmaier, Bryan Turo

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In this revision of his 1996 publication, Mark Stegmaier has polished up an already comprehensive history of the Compromise of 1850 as it unfolded from the perspective of Texas and New Mexico. Whereas most histories have focused on the compromise from the standpoint of the national question about slavery, this work illuminates the significance of the part that fixed the boundary between Texas and New Mexico. Stegmaier argues that the boundary dispute acted as the linchpin for the entire block of compromises the 31st Congress passed in 1850. More so than any other issue-including statehood for California, the new fugitive …

Review Of Life Stages And Native Women: Memory, Teachings, And Story Medicine By Kim Anderson, Rebeka Tabobondung

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Life Stages and Native Women unearths the vital teachings of fourteen diverse Indigenous elder oral historians who share their knowledge about the life cycle of Native women. From conception to walking, childhood and youth, adult years, to grandmothers and elders, author Kim Anderson weaves the four life stages from a series of oral history interviews conducted over a period of five years beginning in 2007. Cree/Metis elder and master storyteller Maria Campbell guides Anderson on her journey to gain knowledge from a generation of Creel Metis, Cree, Saulteaux, and Ojibwe elders, each of whom holds tightly to the stories of …

Review Of Portraits Of The Prairie: The Land That Inspired Willa Cather By Richard Schilling, Richard Jussel

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Ultimately, it seems, most Nebraskans seek to return to their roots: to the "home place," a tree-shaded glen, a favorite swimming hole, or a hilltop view of the old town. Essentially, this is what Richard Schilling returns us to in Portraits of the Prairie: The Land that Inspired Willa Cather. Strolling through Cather's works, he weds her words to his own sketches and watercolors, although quickly pointing out that his paintings "are not illustrations of Cather's stories," but images of the land that an artist sees today. As a result, Schilling creates a work of art that explores the sensitivity …

Review Of Westward Bound: Sex, Violence, The Law, And The Making Of A Settler Society By Lesley Erickson, William Katerberg

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Westward Bound is a detailed study of sex and violence in Canada's prairie provinces and British Columbia-the circumstances and causes of that violence, its policing and prosecution, and the role of both in the shaping of class, race, and gender relations during the settlement era. Lesley Erickson's study can be read profitably along with studies of the us. West, such as David Peterson del Mar's Beaten Down: A History of Interpersonal Violence in the West (2002). Erickson makes few comparisons to the US., framing her analysis instead mostly in relation to historiography on other parts of Canada and Britain. But …

Review Of Always An Adventure: An Autobiography By Hugh A. Dempsey, Michael Payne

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Autobiography has been dismissed as the most self-indulgent of literary forms-biographer Humphrey Carter called it the "most respectable form of lying"-but Always an Adventure seems a little deficient in these respects. Instead, it offers a forthright account of the life of one of Canada's most eminent public historians.

After starting his working life in 1947 as a sign painter, Hugh Dempsey quickly moved on to become a newspaper reporter and publicist before taking up a career with the Glenbow Museum and Archives in Calgary. His book discusses the early, and sometimes contentious, history of the Glenbow, and Dempsey's stories of …

Great Plains Quarterly Volume 32 / Number 3 / Summer 2012

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Contents

Book Reviews

Notes and News

Christopher Lasch And Prairie Populism, Jon K. Lauck

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Christopher Lasch was born in Omaha in 1932. By the end of his life, cut short at age sixty-one, he had become one of the most famous intellectuals in the world. During his life of active writing from the time of the early Cold War until the fall of the Soviet Union, Lasch's distinctive voice pierced through the din of the nation's noisy political and cultural debates. The historian Jackson Lears recalled, in particular, the "spell that Lasch cast over a generation of historians and cultural critics who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s." A product and one-time …

Review Of Eyewitness At Wounded Knee By Richard E. Jensen, R. Eli Paul, And John E. Carter, Dawn G. Marsh

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Wounded Knee, Pine Ridge, the Ghost Dance are all phrases that invoke, perhaps more than any others, the senseless, prolonged acts of atrocity against Native Americans. The story of the events, peoples, and places unfolds on a bleak wintry landscape of the Northern Plains at the end of the nineteenth century. Scholars tell and retell this story, pondering the causes and failed communications, often seeking explanations or rationalizations for the assault on Sioux men, women, and children that took place in South Dakota leaving more than 250 dead. Storytellers, poets, and screenwriters employ the frozen, barren landscapes of the Northern …

Review Of The Dream Of A Broken Field By Diane Glancy

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In her latest book, Diane Glancy, professor emerita at Macalester College, Minnesota, and author of numerous novels, short story collections, and essay collections, returns to the topics that have always been the focus of her work: the importance of space, of landscape, and of travel; reflections on (nonfiction) writing and what she calls "geographies of language" in The Dream of a Broken Field; the difficulties of bridging Native American and European heritages (Glancy has Cherokee, English, and German ancestry); the uneasy combination of Christianity and Indigeneity; and her personal emotional and family history. Like her previous work, especially Claiming …

Review Of Lone Stars Iii: A Legacy Of Texas Quilts, 1986- 2011 By Karoline Patterson Bresenhan And Nancy O'Bryant Puentes, Marcia Kaylakie

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Long awaited by the quilt world, Lone Stars III is the summation of a trilogy of Texas quilt history and quilt documentations. Following the tremendous success of the first two volumes (1986, 1990), book three is another visual wonder of quilt artistry in all its forms. The book is well constructed to create a unified flow of images and ideas. In their introductory "A Quarter Century of Change," Karoline Patterson Bresenhan and Nancy O'Bryant Puentes present a graphic account of the thoughts of modern quilt artists as they struggle to find meaning in modern events.