American Studies Commons^™

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.

Review Of A Separate Country: Postcoloniality And American Indian Nations By Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Akim D. Reinhardt

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Nobody cares about American Indian studies more than Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, and her latest book makes that clear. She calls for stronger departments and a dedicated methodology, and bemoans mere interdisciplinary programs, which force scholars to produce research that caters to traditional Western disciplines and promotes what she considers unsuitable intellectual frameworks. In particular, she decries postcolonial theory, favoring decolonization theory instead and the use of Indigeneity as a category of analysis. From that starting point, the author covers a range of important topics. A high point is the chapter discussing non-Indians who fraudulently assume Indian identity. Her overarching critique of …

Review Of Grand Procession: Contemporary Artistic Visions Of American Indians: The Diker Collection At The Denver Art Museum By Lois Sherr Dubin, Jessica R. Metcalfe

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Life in miniature, history in vibrant hues, art on parade-this is what is presented in Grand Procession, a catalogue printed by the Denver Art Museum to accompany its recent exhibit of contemporary Native American dolls. Meant to serve as a celebration of this art form, the book makes clear that these figures are more than just playthings: they are sculptural "little people" meticulously clothed and accurately designed to depict Plains and Plateau ceremonial regalia.

Dolls have been created for centuries throughout North America, and exhibits such as the Heard Museum's 2010 More Than Child's Play have sought to elevate …

The Right Call: Baseball Coaches' Attempts To Influence Umpires, Kevin Warneke, David C. Ogden

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

On-field conversations and confrontations between baseball coaches and umpires have long been a part of the game. An umpire's decision can alter the course of the game, but little has been written about the exchanges between a coach or manager and umpire, especially in relation to theoretical considerations. This study applies management and leadership theories in exploring the strategies baseball coaches use to contest an umpire's decision. By using leadership scholar John E. Barbuto's concept of influence tactics and the various types of social power discussed by sociologists John R. French and Bertram Raven, the study also tests the congruence …

Documenting Change At Upper Hamburg Bend: Nebraska's First Side-Channel Restoration, Brandon L. Eder, Gerald Mestl

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

In 1996 a side channel was excavated on 629 hectares of former agricultural land at Upper Hamburg Bend on the Missouri River in Otoe County, NE. This was the first side channel constructed on the Missouri River in an attempt to restore lost aquatic habitat. The initial design was for an approximately 4,200 m long side channel to be constructed with a 3 m bottom width. Development ofthe site was to be dependent on flows diverted from the main channel of the river with a final projected top width of 61 m. The side channel was completed in the spring, …

Evaluating The Role Of Latinidad And The Latino Threat In The State Of Missouri, Joel Jennings, J.S. Onésimo Sandoval

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

Growing Latino populations in midwestern cities of the United States are leading to the creation of contested ethnic spaces and urban landscapes. In this article we examine the historical, demographic, and social contexts associated with a growing sense of Latinidad and the countervailing Latino threat narrative in Kansas City and St. Louis, the two largest metropolitan areas in Missouri. Latinidad, or a notion of belonging based on ethnic identity in Missouri, is being challenged by nativist discourses that frame the growing Latino population as a threat. We highlight the different historical trajectories and geographical characteristics that have created distinct demographic …

Reconsidering National Park Interpretation Of The Great Plains And Trans-Mississippi West, Robert Pahre

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

The National Park Service has generally interpreted its sites in the Great Plains in terms of a Eurocentric narrative of westward expansion. Though some sites are changing (e.g., Little Bighorn), others are not (e.g., Scotts Bluff). Even those sites that have changed still retain important elements of traditional narratives, which often date to the 1930s or to the Mission 66 period (1956-66). The newest sites, such as Washita Battlefield, tell newer stories that resonate well with today's visitors. These provide a model for revising older sites. Giving greater attention to causes and consequences, aiming for a richer mix of disciplinary …

Review Of Implementing The Endangered Species Act On The Platte Basin Water Commons. By David M. Freeman, Mary Bomberger Brown

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

David M. Freeman has written a landmark treatise on a landmark event-the development of the Platte River Habitat Recovery Program. The program's goal. is to integrate provisions of the Endangered Species Act and the· habitat needs of four imperiled species (interior least tern, piping plover, whooping crane, and pallid sturgeon) into river basin-wide water management policy. The process was formally initiated 209 in 1997 with the signing of a cooperative agreement between the states of Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming and the U.S. Department of the Interior, but discussions had been under way since the 1970s. The process was completed in …

Review Of Together We Can: Pathways To Collective Leadership In Agriculture At Texas A&M.; By Edward A. Hiler And Steven L. Bosserman., Theodore R. Alter

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

Edward Hiler's leadership journey through a series of major administrative positions at Texas A&M is a story of collective leadership, as told by Hiler himself, and framed by organizational and leadership strategist Steve Bosserman. This brief, highly readable, and provocative book illustrates the philosophical and operational essences of collective leadership. The shifting demographic, economic, ecological, and sociopolitical realities of Texas and the Great Plains called for optimizing the contributions of Texas A&M and other institutions of higher education in addressing critical issues. Hiler, ever the visionary, saw the power of an inclusive, egalitarian, shared leadership style that allowed diverse constituencies …

Review Of Wet Prairie: People, Land, And Water In Agricultural Manitoba. By Shannon Stunden Bower. Foreword By Graeme Wynn., Sterling Evans

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

Wet Prairie is excellent environmental history that evaluates the human/nature relationship. Stunden Bower writes, "In grappling with the environment of their province, Manitobans confronted not only the environmental conditions, but also the political and social arrangements that bore on their lives." Though no easy task, she succeeds in showing these relationships in what is an important contribution to the geographical, environmental, political, and cultural history of the Prairie Provinces and to the Great Plains as a whole.

Review Of Agricultural History: History Of The Prairie West Series, Volume 3. Edited By Gregory P. Marchildon., Bradford Rennie

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

This is the third book of the History of the Prairie West Series published by the Canadian Plains Research Center in Regina, Saskatchewan. The series, edited by Gregory P. Marchildon, consists of articles previously published in Prairie Forum, a journal devoted to the northern Great Plains, primarily the region encompassing the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. The book is organized into four sections: the first contains broad articles that survey prairie history; the other three focus on farming, ranching, and marketing, respectively.

Review Of Birds Of Southwestern Nebraska: An Annotated Check-List Of Species In The North And South Platte River Valleys And At Lake Mcconaughy. By Mary Bomberger Brown, Stephen J. Dinsmore, And Charles R. Brown., Wayne Mollhoff

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

Opening with a map of the region under study, Birds of Southwestern Nebraska proceeds, in its introduction, to a summary of the presettlement landscape and a description of the large-scale habitat changes occurring since then, along with avian responses to those changes. While crediting previous avian studies in southwestern Nebraska, often not readily available to the public, the authors note this area initially received little attention from ornithologists, who tended to focus on other biologically unique parts of the state, such as the Sandhills, forests, and Pine Ridge. The body of the book consists of a list of species reported …

Review Of The Midwestern Native Garden: Native Alternatives To Nonnative Flowers And Plants, An Illustrated Guide By Charlotte Adelman And Bernard L. Schwartz, Stephen L. Young

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

Native plants are important for maintaining biodiversity and supporting birds, mammals, and insects in a particular region. The interaction of plants with other organisms is what makes up food webs, and a shift in one will result in change in the other, change that is often detrimental to both. Invasive plant species, which include many nonnative types, can alter ecosystems with lasting effects on hydrology, nutrient cycling, and habitat. Similar to other regions, the Central Plains is increasingly threatened by the establishment of invasive plant species. The reintroduction of native plant species not only in large natural areas, but also …

Review Of White Man's Water: The Politics Of Sobriety In A Native American Community. By Erica Prussing, Paul Spicer

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

Epidemiological evidence consistently emphasizes the challenges American Indian tribes of the Great Plains confront through excess alcohol consumption. Until Erica Prussing's recent book, however, we have lacked a detailed analysis of the social and cultural context in which these challenges unfold. With a focus on women's experiences across two generations, White Man s Water provides us with a careful description of the social and cultural world of contemporary Northern Cheyennes, coupled with an understanding of how individual experiences within the milieu vary, especially as a function of history.

White Man's Water is a truly significant book: the first book-length ethnographic …

Review Of Sustaining The Cherokee Family: Kinship And The Allotment Of An Indigenous Nation By Rose Stremlau, C. Joseph Genetin-Pilawa

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Cherokee families, Rose Stremlau states in her elegantly written book, were and remain "egalitarian, flexible, inclusive, and decentralized." These characteristics, she argues, have provided stability through difficult times, as Cherokee families faced colonization, displacement and removal, the Civil War, and ultimately the allotment policy of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries {although it is important to note that she also carries her analysis beyond the allotment era, into the mid-to-late twentieth century}. Using U.S. and Cherokee census data, Dawes Commission records, Guion Miller Commission applications, probate records, articles from the national Cherokee Advocate, and oral histories in the Doris Duke …

Ligia Grischa Bylaws

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

1. The Ligia Grischa fixes the period of its existence for 15 years.

2. In this society can only be accepted persons from 12 to 60 years, who show in their life a good behavior.

3. Every member must pay $5.00 on entering the "Ligia Grischa" and signing the statues. He must also pay 1 Taler every month and on the 5th of June 1875 another 10 Talers.

4. Every member who enters after the foundation of the "Ligia Grischa" is obliged to pay the same capital plus 5% more than the members who joined at the foundation of the …

Review Of Murder, The Media, And The Politics Of Public Feelings: Remembering Matthew Shepard And James Byrd Jr. By Jennifer Petersen, Thomas R. Dunn

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The 1998 murders of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. prompted strong emotions in the national debate over hate crimes. Yet while legal, literary, and critical readings of the murders have emerged, little attention has been devoted to these emotions and their role in the politics that followed. Jennifer Petersen remedies this deficiency, offering broader insights about politics, media, and the public sphere.

Drawing upon close readings of local and national media, Petersen tirelessly traces the complex affective webs that surround each case. In the first half of her book, Petersen describes the national media's characterization of Shepard as an …