Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Health And Fertility Implications Related To Seasonal Changes In Kidney Fat Index Of White-Tailed Jackrabbits In South Dakota, Dustin Schaible, Charles D. Dieter

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

White-tailed jackrabbit (Lepus townsendii) populations in the Northern Plains have been in a general decline for the past decade or longer. A suggested reason for this population decline was reduced body condition of individual jackrabbits due to habitat changes. In order to evaluate body condition, we determined the kidney fat index of 314 white-tailed jackrabbits harvested in 44 counties throughout South Dakota. We removed and weighed kidneys and all perirenal fat associated with the kidneys from collected jackrabbits. We measured kidney weight to determine times of high metabolic activity as indicated by an increase in mass. Body condition was …

Review Of Paradise Found: Nature In America At The Time Of Discovery. By Steve Nicholls, John Herron

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

Covering 500 years in 500 pages, Paradise Found details the amazing abundance of the natural world that greeted the first European arrivals to North America. Such a perspective is not wholly original; pre-Columbian biodiversity has been a popular topic of investigation for two generations of scholars. But as filmmaker, entomologist, and author Steve Nicholls explains, past catalogs of plenty have, if anything, underestimated the bounty of the precontact physical world. Explaining in full detail the transition from ecological complexity to fragile instability makes the narrative of loss all the more powerful. Paradise Found is short on silver linings. This account …

Review Of Immigration And Settlement, 1870-1939. Edited By Gregory P. Marchildon., Hans Werner

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

This is the second volume in the History of the Prairie West Series, which focuses on the settlement of the Canadian Prairies by Ukrainian, German, Welsh, Jewish, Dutch, and other immigrants. The collection brings together twenty articles previously published in Prairie Forum grouped according to the themes of the early "opening" of the West, First Nations during the settlement era, patterns of settlement, and ethnic relations. An index greatly aids in finding common themes among the diverse topics. The collection includes articles that made important contributions to settlement history when they first appeared in Prairie Forum, such as the 1997 …

Review Of The Vanishing Face Of Gaia: A Final Warning, By James Lovelock; Foreword By Martin Rees, Robert F. Diffendal Jr.

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

In his latest book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia, James Lovelock writes a clear narrative about the major impacts humans are having on the tightly coupled biotic/ abiotic system we call the Earth and that Lovelock refers to as Gaia in his many scholarly works. He tells us that this coupled system acts in concert to maintain the Earth's environment at an optimal condition for the organisms that live together here, modifying, for example, the atmosphere so that its composition stays at about 21% oxygen and 78% nitrogen (in the tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears this would …

Review Of The Tallgrass Prairie Center Guide To Seed And Seedling Identification In The Upper Midwest. By Dave Williams., H. L. Hillhouse

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

This book will please both practitioners of prairie restoration and more general prairie enthusiasts. It includes 72 grass and forb species, and the focus is clearly on species often found in tallgrass prairie plantings in the upper Midwest. The grasses and forbs are presented separately here, and for each group a morphological key is provided to divide the species into "Key Characteristic Groups." Because these groups are based on morphological similarity, species within a group are often-but not always-closely related.

Short and highly portable, the book covers the most common species in plantings. The only thing that would have delighted …

Review Of Environmental City: People, Place, Politics, And The Meaning Of Modern Austin. By William Scott Swearingen, Jr., Jonathan R. Wynn

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

William Scott Swearingen, lr.'s Environmental City is a social history of how a place like Red Bud Isle and the larger city surrounding it could come to exist. Swearingen opens with the founding of Austin, and takes the reader through the ideals shaping its modern era: the battle between the twin paradigms of "growth" and "green." At its heart, the book tells the story of the success of Austin's green campaign: how "place" was created, fought for, and won. Not all battles were victories, but Swearingen points to key moments, and unpacks the slow process of institutionalizing broad environmental concepts …

Do Invasive Riparian Woody Plants Affect Hydrology And Ecosystem Processes?, Julie Huddle, Tala Awada, Derrel Martin, Xinhua Zhou, Sue Ellen Pegg, Scott Josiah

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

© 2011 Copyright by the Center for Greot Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Review Of The Frontier Newspapers And The Coverage Of The Plains Indian Wars By Hugh J. Reilly, Kyle Carsten Wyatt

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

As a community of scholars, we need to ask more from books like this. Despite a topic ripe with fruitful and compelling potential, Reilly's approach to newspaper coverage of the Plains Indian Wars lacks rigor, nuance, and engagement with contemporary critical conversations.

Reilly, a communications professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, discusses eight "watershed events," from the Great Sioux Uprising in 1862 to the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1891. Newspapers throughout the United States, indeed the world, reported on these conflicts. The coverage that appeared in national publications, such as the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune …

Review Of Native American Drama: A Critical Perspective By Christy Stanlake, Julie Pearson-Little Thunder

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Understanding Native American drama requires a critical perspective often lacking in theater and academia. Christy Stanlake's book helps remedy this problem with a two-fold strategy. First, she identifies four Native-authored discourses generated in part by the study of American Indian fiction and poetry. Then she applies these discourses to readings from nine Native plays, showing how Native philosophies shape Native drama on the page and in performance. Stanlake explains that place, or "platiality," in western theater assumes new dimensions in Native drama, expressing complex relationships among character, language, and landscape. She examines the historical and political aspects of Native storytelling …

Review Of The Color Of The Land: Race, Nation, And The Politics Of Landownership In Oklahoma, 1832-1929 By David A. Chang, Jacob Sherman

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Power is often tied to who controls the economic capital, and whoever has it will delineate terms of membership within that society. Oklahoma's and the Great Plains' greatest capital is land. The Color of the Land effectively examines how Creek Nation lands defined membership along racial lines both inside and outside of the tribe. David Chang skillfully pieces together the fluctuation of racial complexities as lands transferred from communal to wealthy private ownership.

Chang notes that Creek lands were primarily communal based upon clan loyalties. Clans had no racial distinctions. Racial definitions developed as Creeks began owning slaves by the …

Review Of Literary Life: A Second Memoir By Larry Mcmurtry, Tom Pilkington

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Literary Life is the second entry of Larry McMurtry's projected trilogy of memoirs. The first, Books (2008), recalls his lifelong avocation as book scout, dealer, and eventually bookstore owner. The yet-to-be-published third, Hollywood, will relate his experiences as a screenwriter. Literary Life takes as its subject McMurtry's career as prolific writer and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lonesome Dove (1985).

Let it be said right off the bat that this slim volume is a mess, a lazy, sloppy collection of random memories that lacks anything resembling a coherent structure. Though it begins at the beginning-with the young McMurtry reading boys' …

Review Of Patrick Connor's War: The 1865 Powder River Indian Expedition By David E. Wagner, John H. Monnett

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Patrick Connor's War is the late David E. Wagner's second book in the past year dealing with the military operations against Lakotas and Cheyennes in the Powder River country of today's Wyoming and environs in 1865. Like his previous work, Powder River Odyssey, dealing with Nelson Cole's wing of an expensive army offensive operation against the Plains tribes in the wake, some contend, of raids on the Overland Trail avenging the Sand Creek Massacre, the current book relies heavily on campaign records, personal recollections, and diaries of the officers, civilian contractors, and enlisted men involved in the campaign. The …

Rising Tides And Color Revolutions, Charles Mitchell

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

My art is based on the argument that visual culture has a profound effect on society, and in turn, on our environment. The radical changes that will be necessary to produce a sustainable society and avoid a future of social inequality and climate catastrophe must be mirrored by equally radical changes in visual culture.  These changes involve shifting the sociological sites for art to put culture back into service for the local, participatory communities that are our brightest promise in achieving a sustainable society.  In an age beset by unprecedented economic, social, and ecological challenges no problem can be more …

Scenes From A Crash, Byron J. Anway

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

In the summer of 2010, a drunk driver veered off the road, colliding with my house. Car parts, both recognizable and unidentifiable, littered the lawn: twisted metal, plastic, bits of industrial insulation, and fluids leaked from the engine, leaving large swaths of dead grass. The rubble provided rich subject matter from which to make work. Scenes from a Crash is a series of drawings and paintings made about my surroundings. This show sheds prior conventions and reevaluates assumptions about palette, scale, and medium.

My painting practice involves following intuitive impulses; I allow my internal dialogue to highlight people, places, and …

Textile Society Of America Newsletter 23:2 — Spring/Summer 2011, Textile Society Of America

Textile Society of America: Newsletters

Tinkuy de Tejedores
TSA News
From the President
TSA Study Tours
TSA Member News
Conference Reviews
Symposium 2010: Reports by TSA Award Recipients
Textile Community News
Book Reviews
Publication News
Featured Collection: Textiles at the American Swedish Institute
Calls for Papers
Calendar-Conference & Symposia, Exhibitions, Lectures, Workshops, Tours
TSA Symposium 2012 Call for Participation

“A Very Goddess Of Persuasion:” Mary Dudley Sidney As An Exemplar Of Women’S Political Significance In Elizabethan England, Catherine Medici-Thiemann

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Elizabeth’s England saw the emergence of formal institutions of political power, but the importance of the personal politics, ruled by patronage, reputation, and favor still held. Looking at the ways that women participated in personal politics, through their communication and patronage networks, illuminates how women gained political power in sixteenth century England.

The intersection of personal politics and a female queen allowed women to The intersection of personal politics and a female queen allowed women to maintain significant political power in Elizabethan England. Women at Elizabeth’s court gained great political importance through their proximity to the queen, their ability to …

Smoke And Mirrors: A History Of Nagpra And The Evolving U.S. View Of The American Indian, Lindee R. Grabouski

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

While paintings of Native Americans and Europeans exchanging goods and cultural values adorn the walls of museums around the United States, actual Native/non-Native interaction over the past 500 years has been one of illusion, not cooperation. Until recently, legislation “protecting” Native Americans appeared altruistic on the surface, but, instead, served only as a facade for keeping Native artifacts in the hands of scientists and collectors. Even the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), the most recent legislative attempt to reconcile the past mistreatment of Native Americans, is riddled with obstacles and optical illusions.

Certainly, NAGPRA demonstrates the most …

After The Rainbow, Rachel Hruza

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis contains a multi-genre collection featuring fiction and memoir. It explores characterization through relationships by focusing on the external and internal forces that influence a person’s connection to herself or another. Some pieces verge on the plane of magical realism while others are factually based. While most of this collection is serious in tone, the author hopes the reader will find joy in the small moments as well as the momentous.

Piracy, Slavery, And Assimilation: Women In Early Modern Captivity Literature, David C. Moberly

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis examines a hitherto neglected body of works featuring female characters enslaved in Islamicate lands. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many Englishmen and women were taken captive by pirates and enslaved in what is now the Middle East and North Africa. Several writers of the time created narratives and dramas about the experiences of such captives. Recent scholarship has brought to light many of these works and pointed out their importance in establishing what was still a young, unsure, and developing English identity in this early period. Most of this scholarship, however, has dealt with narratives of the …

Women On The Ground: Bringing Theory And Activism Together Through Domestic Violence Narratives, Kacey J. Barrow

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis works toward bringing domestic violence activism and feminist theory together by refuting that these two approaches are necessarily in binary opposition. It is centered on changing the way we make sense of violence against women by addressing why the authors that include personal narrative in their writing should be help up as examples of theory. By analyzing literary domestic violence narratives, the author demonstrates that narrative is itself theory. In addition, this essay creates a third space where the author‘s own domestic violence narratives complement the literary narratives. The author shows how we can analyze victimized characters in …

"What's A Goin' On?" People And Place In The Fiction Of Edythe Squier Draper, 1924–1941, Aubrey R. Streit Krug

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This essay is devoted to looking back into the life and fiction of Edythe Squier Draper, a twentieth-century writer in Oswego, Kansas. Many of Draper’s stories are set in southeastern Kansas. Through them, we gain a sense of how she attempted—and at times failed—to perceive, articulate, and adapt to her place on the Great Plains. Draper claimed the identity of a rural woman writer by writing herself into narratives of colonial, agricultural settlement, and she both complicated and perpetuated stereotypes of class and race in her fiction. By examining her and her characters’ perspective on their place in the Great …

Great Plains Research, Spring 2011, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Complete Issue)

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

Workplace Religious Accommodation for Muslims and the Promise of State Constitutionalism • Peter J. Longo and Joan M. Blauwkamp . 3

Using Euro-American Hunting Data to Assess Western Great Plains Biogeography, 1806-35 • Cody Newton . 17

The Political Consequences of Population Consolidation in Nebraska • Diane L. Duffin . 27

Cottonwood Riparian Site Selection on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation • Julie A. Thorstenson, Diane H. Rickerl, and Janet H. Gritzner . 39

Do Invasive Riparian Woody Plants Affect Hydrology and Ecosystem Processes? • Julie A. Huddle, Tala Awada, Derrel L. Martin, Xinhua Zhou, Sue Ellen Pegg, and Scott …

Up Too Late: A Novel Excerpt, Peter Bayless

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Tyler Sexton is a male in his mid-twenties whose life seems to have ground to a halt before it truly began. Despite the opportunities afforded him by a successful college education and an upper-middle-class family background, Tyler's life since the death of his father from heart disease has become one dominated by malaise, living alone and working a dead-end job as a grocery store customer-service manager, clinging to the family members he has left. Now, with his mother suffering from a debilitating fight with cancer and his sisters either starting their own families or withdrawing even further into episodes of …

My Secret Life In Film: A Memoir, Kelly Grey Carlisle

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This creative dissertation is an original work in the genre of memoir, and consists of the first two sections of my book, My Secret Life in Film. I believe that my book speaks to contemporary experiences of childhood, violence, sexuality, and faith, and complicates conceptions of a ‘normal’ family. When I was three weeks old, my mother, who worked as a prostitute, was murdered near downtown Los Angeles. Her case remains unsolved, and I do not know my father. Her own parents were unwed. At first I lived with my maternal grandmother and the woman I believe to have been …

Closely Observed, Meghan C. Sullivan

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

There are many ways in which people communicate but the most powerful ways are often unspoken. Our gestures can convey a tremendous amount of information. The smallest change of posture will alert us to a shift in mood. This is understood on a subconscious level. In every interaction, there are layers of information that color each person’s understanding of what is happening at the moment. Many aspects of our personalities are unknown to others. Subtle and seemingly ordinary interactions can have deep emotional and psychological resonance.

My figurative ceramic sculptures are observations of people existing in prosaic moments. The gestures …

Basic Space, Sean P. Morrissey

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

The American suburban landscape and lifestyle incites my investigation of land use, development and consumerism.  Our cultural obsession with the “dream home” and the act of displaying a social identity through popular architectural enhancements is what attracts me to this landscape.  In my work I emphasize banal architecture and ornamentation to accentuate issues of sameness and draw attention to the loss of individuality.  The information is distilled into a visual language inspired by my personal histories with zoning, geography, and land use, borrowing from the flatness and simplicity of cartographic design, informational graphics and architectural illustration.  In my own work …

A Memory Forgotten: Representation Of Women And The Washington D.C. Arsenal Monument, Melissa Sheets

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

The Arsenal Monument in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington D.C. commemorates the twenty-one women who died while working as cartridge makers in the Washington Arsenal on June 17th, 1864. It utilizes both traditional and idealized memorial imagery, represented by an allegorical figure of Grief who stands atop the Monument’s shaft, as well as a realistic representation of the Arsenal explosion carved into the base. Erected only a year after the incident, the Monument can be interpreted as commemorating all twenty-one women by the inclusion of their names on the sides of the base. From this listing of names and the …

Women's Week 2011: Schedule Of Events

UNL Women's Week Presentations

Nebraska East Union Loft Gallery

Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center

Nebraska Union Rotunda Gallery

Leadership Luncheon: “The Media and Women’s Health: Sorting Fact from Fiction” -- Judy Norsigian, editor of Our Bodies, Ourselves.

Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Status of Women

"That’s Not Ok: Domestic Violence & The Media” -- Dr. Jan Deeds & Jeff Reznicek-Parrado

Leadership Luncheon: “Local Concerns, Global Forum: Women’s Advocacy at the United Nations”  -- Laura Roost, Political Science PhD candidate

Women’s and Gender Studies Colloquium “Motherhood, the Elephant in the Laboratory: Reconsidering What It Means to Be a Scientist” -- Emily Monosson, …

Queen Of The Platform: Inventions On The Life Of Matilda Fletcher, Laura Madeline Wiseman

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation explores the 19th century lecturer, poet, and suffragist, Matilda Fletcher (1842-1909). The fifth of fourteen children from abolitionist parents, Matilda was born in Illinois. Like her brother, who served in the Civil War, Matilda imagined herself in the public sphere. After the death of her one and only child, Matilda joined the lecture circuit. She spoke to support herself and her first husband, until his death. He died of tuberculosis, a disease he contracted during his service to the Union. Her lectures were a series of talks so powerful a man named a silver mine after her. Another …

The “Definitiveness” Of Genocide And A Question Of Genocide: A Review Essay, Bedross Der Matossian

Department of History: Faculty Publications

Over the course of the past two decades, the historiography of the Armenian Genocide has evolved through the introduction of new methodologies, approaches, and more complex analyses of the Genocide that venture beyond rudimentary and essentialist arguments and representations. Concomitantly, denialist literature has also developed, reinvigorated in the U.S. by the presentation of alternative ways of viewing the event in order to counter “Armenian allegations.” The latest such endeavor, disguised under the cloak of “scholarship,” has been the introduction of the concept of “crimes against humanity” as an alternative designation to genocide or as a new “compromise” when dealing with …