American Studies Commons^™

Profiles Of Selected Mormon Athletes In Professional Sports, J. Michael Hunter

Faculty Publications

“Profiles of Selected Mormon Athletes in Professional Sports” provides profiles with career highlights of over 200 Mormon athletes in professional sports, including baseball, basketball, bodybuilding, boxing, football, golf, hockey, racing, running, volleyball, and wrestling. This chapter appears in the second volume of Mormons and Popular Culture: The Global Influence of an American Phenomenon (Praeger 2013), a comprehensive treatment of Mormons and popular culture, providing an introduction and wide-ranging overview of the topic.

A Midwestern Culture Of Civility: Student Activism At The University Of Northern Iowa During The Maucker Years (1967-1970), Christopher J. Shackelford

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This project examines the changing social dynamic of those affiliated with the University of Northern Iowa during the latter half of the 1960s, with special emphasis on student activism and the changing attitudes of administrators and community members. This project intends to use the medium of alternative newspapers as a central component in the analysis of the time studied and as an unfiltered voice of student dissent. By narrowing the focus of this project to an individual university and community, an intimate narrative emerges that acts as a testament of the overwhelming atmosphere of change that engulfed American colleges throughout …

Playing By New Rules: Board Games And America's Cold War Culture, 1945-1965, Matthew John Sprengeler

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This thesis examines the domestic culture of the United States during the first two decades of the Cold War, using popular games as an interpretive tool to expand our understanding of the changes that took place. Four board games which were popular during the 1950s – Scrabble, chess, Clue, and Risk – explain some of the anxieties and evolutions in mass culture. Scrabble illustrated the nation's growing respect for expertise and, along with game theory, the hope for intellectual solutions to the country's problems. Chess, often seen as a symbol of the Cold War, served as a proxy battlefield for …

The Black Freedom Struggle And Civil Rights Labor Organizing In The Piedmont And Eastern North Carolina Tobacco Industry, Jennifer Wells

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines labor organizing in the U.S. South, specifically the Piedmont and eastern regions of North Carolina in the mid-twentieth century. It aims to uncover an often overlooked local history of civil rights labor organizing which challenged the southern status quo before America's 'mainstream' civil rights era of the 1950s and 1960s. This study argues that through labor organizing, African American tobacco workers challenged the class, gender, and race hierarchy of North Carolina's very profitable tobacco industry during the first half of the twentieth century. In doing so, the thesis contributes to the historiography of black working class protest, …

Rice, Cale Young, 1872-1943 (Sc 2646), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 2646. Letter of Cale Young Rice, 29 December 1919, disputing a poor review of his poetry by literary critic William Braithwaite and complaining of similar criticism by others. The letter may have been directed to the Boston Evening Transcript, where Braithwaite was literary editor. Includes a note of 22 December 1919 asking that the letter be printed.

Aa Ms 06 Home Is Where I Make It - Oral History Collection Finding Aid, Marieke Van Der Steenhoven

Search the Manuscript Collection (Finding Aids)

Description:

This oral history project was directed by Dr. Maureen Elgersman Lee, of USM, and Rachel Talbot Ross. The interviews were conducted by local high school students. The Collection includes transcripts, photographs and audiotapes from the two phases of the project, which documented African American life in the Greater Portland and Lewiston-Auburn areas.

Date Range:

2001-2003

Size of Collection:

1 ft.

An Undergraduate Seminar On Irish Musical Culture In Ireland And The Irish Diaspora In America, Including The Influence Of Irish Music On Appalachian Folk Music Culture, Frieda Eakins

Masters Theses

The following project establishes a concise, yet multifaceted design for a seminar on Irish musical culture. While it was initially developed as a course for its author to teach in the undergraduate, on-ground classroom, this project provides a framework adaptable enough for use by other instructors and/or for additional music seminars. This project is unique in its two-fold purpose in that the design and resources are directed to assist the instructor with streamlining course curriculum preparation, while the course content specific to the project when utilized offers students in the undergraduate college classroom a better understanding of Irish musical culture …

Buckner, Simon Bolivar, 1823-1914 (Sc 61), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 61. Manuscript poem entitled “The Censer Bowl” written by Simon Bolivar Buckner.

The Elements Of A Creative Environment: Was The Roycroft Campus Of 1900 - 1915 A Hothouse?, Katherine Somerville

The Exposition

Ancient Athens, Renaissance-era Florence, and Germany’s Bauhaus community that practiced between the two World Wars are all examples of what Barton Kunstler refers to as a hothouse. He defines a hothouse as an area where creativity flourishes wildly and magnificently, producing results that neither nature nor the usual round of human activity could ever anticipate. Out of each of Kunstler’s notable hothouse communities came extraordinary achievements and he theorizes that a hothouse is created out of a relatively rare confluence of forces – 36 factors within four dimensions, to be exact. In this essay I will show how the creative …

Paschal, Mabel Fayette (Thompson), 1905-1936 (Sc 2640), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 2640. Typescript copy of paper titled “Dr. John Milton Harney,” by Mrs. C. R. Paschal, written for a class at Western Kentucky State Teachers’ College. The paper gives details about Harney’s poetry, and includes a few excerpts.

Volume 5 - Issue 1: La Créole - A Journal Of Creole History & Genealogy, Dr. Miki Pfeffer, Seraphia D. Leyda, Dr. Raphael Cassimere Jr., Ingrid R. Stanley, Dr. Ronald Dorris, Alexie Gaddis, Dr. Ernest G. Chachere, Catherine Ladnier

La Créole - A Journal of Creole History & Genealogy

The Louisiana Creole Research Association, Inc., known as LA Creole, was founded on August 21, 2004 as a New Orleans-based, non-profit family research and educational organization. Its purpose is to assist Creoles of Color in researching their ancestry, to educate the general public about Creole history and culture, and to celebrate the contributions and legacy of a unique, sometimes forgotten people. La Créole, the Association’s journal is published annually.

Crabb, Alfred Leland, 1884-1979 (Sc 762), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 762. Letter, 20 May 1958, written by Alfred Leland Crabb, Nashville, Tennessee, to Eugenia Gerard Paxton, Bowling Green, Kentucky, responding to Mrs. Paxton’s laudatory letter commenting on his book, Peace in Bowling Green. Also poems composed by Crabb for Christmas greetings.

Murrey, Loretta (Martin) (Mss 429), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 429. Interviews conducted by Loretta (Martin) Murrey, professor of English at Western Kentucky University, with poet Joy Bale Boone. Includes transcriptions, summaries, and cassette tapes (32). The interviews emphasize biographical information and descriptions of Boone's influence as a poet and literary activist.

Rice, Cale Young, 1872-1943 (Sc 515), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 515. Letter, 17 January 1926, from Cale Young Rice, Louisville, Kentucky, to Mrs. Grayot? giving permission to reprint some of his poetry in the magazine "The Club Woman." Also includes some of his comments concerning poetry.

New Deal Leftists, Henry Wallace And "Gideon's Army," And The Progressive Party In Montana, 1937-1952, Hugh T. Lovin

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Many forces occupied America's sociopolitical terrain to the left of New Dealers who dominated U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's administration of the 1930s. Some fastened themselves temporarily to the New Dealers' coattails. Ideologically motivated, others touted their special panaceas for ending the Great Depression that had begun in 1929, and certain of the mainstream Democratic Party's expatriates added to this cacophony by pursuing their own agendas. Comprised principally of the Democratic Party's out-of-power people, another group wanted to restore Roosevelt's reforming to its 1933-34 height, change the federal government's thrust to the leftward in. certain particulars, and impose New Deal-style reform …

Review Of The Catherian Cathedral: Gothic Cathedral Iconography In Willa Cather's Fiction By Christine E. Kephart, Nicholas Birns

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Christine Kephart's book is published in a series dedicated to the late Merrill Maguire Skaggs, one of the leading Cather scholars. It honors Skaggs's memory with an original, sprightly, and captivating illumination of the motif of the cathedral throughout Cather's writing. We all know about Death Comes to the Archbishop and, to a lesser extent, Shadows on the Rock with their overt engagement of New World Catholicism and the presence within them of churches, cathedrals, and bishops. But Kephart looks for the cathedral motif throughout Cather's oeuvre, beginning with her failed first novel, Alexander's Bridge, where Kephart sees the …

Review Of The Grads Are Playing Tonight! The Story Of The Edmonton Commercial Graduates Basketball Club By M. Ann Hall, Carly Adams

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

M. Ann Hall, author of The Girl and the Game (2002), one of the "must read" books on Canadian women's sport history, brings us this fascinating look at the Edmonton Commercial Graduates Basketball Club. Historians' fascination with the Edmonton Grads, perhaps the most well-known story in Canadian women's sport history, has resulted in numerous published articles over the last two decades and a 1987 National Film Board of Canada film, Shooting Stars. Yet this is the first comprehensive book about the club. In an extensively researched, accessible, yet detailed read, Hall reveals new insights into the team, the organization, the …

Review Of Ned Wynkoop And The Lonely Road From Sand Creek By Louis Kraft, James T. Carroll

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This narrative opens in typical form for a biography portraying the life of a nineteenth- century frontiersman in the American West. Ned Wynkoop sought adventure on the American frontier, encountered various Native American cultures, engaged in resource speculation, attempted to enter territorial politics, and served with distinction in the Civil War. These common attributes, however, are only a small part of Wynkoop's historical significance. His worldview was completely transformed after prolonged contact with Native peoples and the events surrounding the massacre at Sand Creek, Colorado Territory, in November 1864.

Ned Wynkoop arrived in Colorado Territory by a circuitous route in …

Review Of American Indians And The Mass Media Edited By Meta G. Carstarphen And John P. Sanchez, Dean Rader

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Earlier in the year, I spent some time on the White Earth Lake Reservation (Ojibwe) in northern Minnesota. At one point, to counter some nasty diaper rash (not mine), I went into a store to buy corn starch. My only choice was Argo. I was prepared for discomfort-I've always hated the bizarre half-Indian-maiden / halfcorncob figure that has come to be recognized as Argo's brand, and the irony of purchasing this item, on this reservation, in the middle of the Corn Belt was too much. But, thankfully, Argo had changed its label, so at least there was one less thing …

Review Of The First We Can Remember: Colorado Pioneer Women Tell Their Stories Edited And With An Introduction By Lee Schweninger., Dee Garceau

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Although the term "pioneer" in the book title recalls Turner's West where white emigrants were the vanguard of civilization, Lee Schweninger places these narratives within the contexts of gendered and postcolonial scholarship. In a thoughtful introduction, Schweninger emphasizes the value of firsthand testimony from ordinary people, especially women, who lived outside circles of public leadership and power. Women's narratives provide insight into changing family and community relations; links between local, regional, and national economies; contests over land and resources; racial-ethnic identities and tensions; and how women made meaning out of their western experience.

In the winter of 1933-34, the Civil …

Review Of Indigenous Dance And Dancing Indian: Contested Representation In The Global Era By Matthew Krystal, Jacqueline Shea Murphy

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This is a thoughtful, helpful, somewhat unusually focused book that looks at K'iche Maya Traditional Dance in Guatemala, Native American Powwow (particularly in the Upper Midwest), Folkloric dance in the Chicago area, and at the University of Illinois's "Chief Illiniwek" dancing mascot from an anthropologically informed ethnographic perspective. The section on Maya dance comes from the author's dissertation research, while the sections on Indigenous dance and "playing Indian" in the Midwest are from fieldwork he has undertaken, postdissertation, while teaching at North Central College in Illinois. Krystal brings these diverse performance practices into dialogue with each other by looking at …

Review Of Toward A More Perfect Union: The Settlement Of Union Township, Clay County, Kansas By James R. Beck, Bruce R. Kahler

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

James R. Beck laments the fact that he cannot tell us why the early settlers bought and sold land in Union Township. Although his microscopic land history can illuminate what land was acquired-as well as how, when, and by whom-he says only "social histories provide the flesh of human stories to the bones of deed and mortgage details that are recorded in dusty courthouse record books." I see no need for apology. Beck deserves our gratitude for sweeping away the dust and revealing the underlying structure of settlement in northcentral Kansas.

The chief subject here is the variety of means …

Review Of Norwegians And Swedes In The United States: Friends And Neighbors Edited By Philip J. Anderson And Dag Blanck, Betty A. Bergland

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Norwegians and Swedes is an international and interdisciplinary collection of essays representing recent scholarship on migration and emphasizing relationships between two groups of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century immigrants from Europe. Emerging from a 2007 conference, the book contains seventeen essays by active scholars in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and the United States. Donna R. Gabaccia's thoughtful foreword helps frame the book and informs readers that twenty years ago Rudolph J. Vecoli called for an "interethnic perspective on American immigration history." This collection might be seen as the fruit of that vision. Emerging at! a time when immigration continues to vex the …

From Mothers' Pensions To Aid To Dependent Children In The Great Plains: The Course From Charity To Entitlement, R. Alton Lee

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The most important third-party movement in American history emerged out of the social and economic chaos brewing in the Great Plains in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. The maelstrom, labeled Populism, contained a powerful, indeed a truly revolutionary message-that man was his brother's keeper. This concept proved to have consistent influence in America, dating from the Populists, through the Progressives and the New Deal depression era, to the Great Society of the 1960s. Henry Loucks of South Dakota, one-time president of the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union and chairman of the Populist convention in Omaha in …

Review Of Alexandre Hogue: An American Visionary -- Paintings And Works On Paper By Susie Kalil, Mark White

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Susie Kalil's Alexandre Hogue surveys the artist's paintings and drawings from his earliest works of the 1920s to his mature paintings from the 1980s. Hogue remains best known for the Erosion series he produced in the 19305 and has been marginalized unfairly as a Regionalist ever since. Kalil intends to change that categorization by repositioning Hogue as a visionary painter who explored fundamental relationships between humanity and nature through a sensitive understanding of place. She hopes to leave the reader with a sense of "Hogue's continuing attempt to give voice and form to some of his deepest feelings and intuitions." …

Ligia Grischa: A Successful Swiss Colony On The Dakota Territory Frontier, Todd Quinn, Karl Benedict, Jeff Dickey

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In 1877 a small group of Swiss immigrants from the Graubunden canton formed a cooperative with another Swiss group in Stillwater, Minnesota, to begin a colony in eastern South Dakota. These settlers founded the Badus Swiss colony on the open prairie in Lake County, Dakota Territory {later South Dakota}, based on cooperative rules written in Switzerland in 1424. This settlement was one of the last Swiss colonies created in the United States during the great nineteenth-century European migration, and one of the westernmost Swiss settlements in the United States.

There were two major factors that contributed to the Badus Swiss …

Review Of Seeing Red: A History Of Natives In Canadian Newspapers By Mark Cronlund Anderson And Carmen L. Robertson, Timonthy P. Foran

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In this intensely provocative book, University of Regina professors Anderson and Robertson contend that newspapers have played a central role in the Canadian colonial project through. their representation of Aboriginal peoples over the past 140 years. Despite having become less overtly racist in tone and terminology since the late nineteenth century, Canadian newspapers have nevertheless persisted in framing Aboriginal peoples within three essentialist tropes: depravity, innate inferiority, and a stubborn resistance to progress. These tropes have fed into the mainstream ideology underpinning colonial practices-the treaty system, residential schools, and ongoing assimilationist efforts-while simultaneously providing a foil against which mainstream Canada …

Review Of Museum Pieces: Toward The Indigenization Of Canadian Museums By Ruth B. Phillips, Lee-Ann Martin

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The recent history of museums and Indigenous peoples has developed along diverging lines in Canada and the United States. In Canada, the controversy around The Spirit Sings: Artistic Traditions of Canada's First Peoples, an exhibition organized for the 1988 Olympics in Calgary, Alberta, provided the impetus for the Task Force on Museums and First Peoples which, in turn, sparked subsequent debates surrounding museological policies and practices over the past twenty years. Ruth Phillips locates this exhibition as the point of departure for the "postcolonial project" that has informed subsequent museum reform in Canada.

Thoroughly articulated with characteristic rigor, Phillips's …

Review Of Re-Imagining Ukranian Canadians: History, Politics, And Identity Edited By Rhonda L. Hinther And Jim Mochoruk, Myroslaw Tateryn

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Hinther and Mochoruk offer the reader an interdisciplinary look at aspects of Canadian history through the prism of the Ukrainian Canadian experience. The volume includes contributions from an array of specialists: historians, literary critics, archivists, curators, geographers, and others. Consequently, the quality of the articles is wide-ranging, but overall the editors succeed in demonstrating that the immigrant experience is neither homogeneous nor adequately studied.

The editors' introduction is most helpful, succinctly describing the state of academic inquiry into the Ukrainian Canadian experience. The editors accurately describe the "mythology" of the prairie peasant-cum-dangerous foreigner. They present the evolution of scholarship from …

Review Of Louise Erdrich: Tracks, The Last Report On The Miracles At Little No Horse, The Plague Of Doves Edited By Deborah L. Madsen, Thomas Austenfeld

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Important North American novels published since 1990, discussed in three parts, each containing three essays on a total of three key recent works: this is the formal straitjacket the publication format of the Continuum Studies in Contemporary North American Fiction imposes on its editors. Each of the nine contributors to this volume is committed to a particular theoretical approach, some so strongly that their essays momentarily turn into handbook articles on the theory in question beforealmost as an afterthought-coming back to Louise Erdrich's novels.