American Studies Commons^™

Review Of The American Military Frontiers: The United States Army In The West, 1783-1900 By Robert Wooster, Mark R. Scherer

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Given the vast breadth and depth of American military historiography, well-organized and well-written narrative overviews of the field are always welcome. Robert Wooster's recently released The American Military Frontiers certainly fits that description. Wooster, a professor of history at Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi, and the author of four other books on western military history, synthesizes several generations of previous scholarship to support his most fundamental theme: that the Army served not only as the executor of nineteenth century national policy, but also as an important catalytic "shaper" of that policy. In its attention to the multiple roles played by …

Review Of Seeking Life Whole: Willa Cather And The Brewsters By Lucy Marks And David Porter, Kari A. Ronning

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Seeking Life Whole, eighth in Fairleigh Dickinson's series on Willa Cather, is a volume in two parts, with nine subdivisions, and excellent notes. Part 1 contains Lucy Marks's biographical account of the lives of expatriate painters Achsah Barlow Brewster and her husband Earl H. Brewster, and David Porter's biographical and critical account of the previously unknown relationship between the Brewsters and Willa Cather. The Brewsters went to Europe after their marriage in 1910 to dedicate themselves to painting, nature, study, and a simple, beautiful way of life; they attracted a remarkable range of friends. Their type has been satirized, …

Review Of Bleeding Borders: Race, Gender, And Violence In Pre-Civil War Kansas By Kristen Tegtmeier Oertel, Michael D. Pierson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Bleeding Kansas has long been an important topic for political historians exploring how it influenced Congress, presidential campaigns, and the coming of the Civil War. Kristen Tegtmeier Oertel's book uses the insights of recent social historians to add depth to this political narrative, thereby strengthening our understanding of how antebellum Kansas changed America.

Bleeding Borders begins with a chapter that positions Kansas as a frontier territory. Oertel's antebellum Kansans are divided by race, but not just between white and black. Starting her history in the 1820s, Oertel finds that "white settlers' perceptions of and interactions with Kansas Indians played a …

Review Of No Place Like Home: Notes From A Western Life By Linda M. Hasselstrom, Gretchen Legler

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

What's happening to Linda Hasselstrom's Great Plains is happening everywhere, even in western Maine, where New Yorkers migrate north, buying second houses in communities once home to lobstermen, farmers, and lumberjacks, changing the face of the social, political, and natural landscape. It's enough to make a person, well, want to let off some steam, and perhaps try to come to some conclusions about what is happening to land and community in America in general and in the Great Plains in particular, which is what Hasselstrom does in her newest work of nonfiction. In this collection of linked essays, she returns …

Review Of Lee Lawrie's Prairie Deco: History In Stone At The Nebraska State Capitol By Gregory Paul Harm, Robert S. Haller

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This book is a tribute to the power of art, specifically, of the sculpture outside and inside the Nebraska State Capitol. It so impressed Gregory Harm in his youth that he has undertaken in maturity an enthusiastic exploration of the aesthetic and historical background of that sculpture and its creator Lee Lawrie (1877-1963). He found his way to the Lawrie archives at the Library of Congress, the University of Nebraska, and the Capitol itself, and stood in awe before Lawrie's monumental works for Rockefeller Center and other public buildings around the country. His book makes the case that Lawrie should …

Review Of And Grace Will Lead Me Home: African American Freedmen Communities Of Austin, Texas, 1865-1928 By Michelle M. Mears, Maria Franklin

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Michelle Mears's book on the rural and urban freedmen settlements of Austin is a welcome contribution to the social history of African Americans in Texas. By considering postemancipation black lifeways at such a small scale, as few existing works do, it offers readers a more comprehensive view of the experiences, struggles, and accomplishments of African Americans within a specific historical context. Mears also achieves a good balance between discussing Austin's historic black communities and situating them within the social, economic, and political processes occurring more broadly within the state and the greater South.

Her research is meticulous, and scholars will …

Review Of Modernism And Mildred Walker By Carmen Pearson, Ken Egan

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Can a regionalist be a major writer? That's the question at the heart of Modernism and Mildred Walker. It's a question that hovers over contemporary responses to Willa Cather and Wallace Stegner. Since their best work inhabits definable places (though far more varied than readers often realize), it's tempting to localize them, limit their power, impact, and appeal.

Not surprisingly, these two writers figure prominently in this sophisticated study of another writer often treated as limited in range (in every sense). Full disclosure: I have written on Walker as a Montana writer, one best known for her brilliant World War …

Review Of The Indian Commissioners: Agents Of The State And Indian Policy In Canada's Prairie West, 1873-1932 By E. Brian Titley, George Colpitts

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

E. Brian Titley's The Indian Commissioners makes a fine contribution to Great Plains history and, in Canadian studies, the shaping of western Indian policy. The case of Canada's Indian Commissioners, appointed from 1873 to 1909 and again between 1920 and 1932, is worthy of a single study. Titley's thesis is solidly argued: though responsible for putting into practice Ottawa's policies, the five Indian commissioners in the history of the service retained some latitude in carrying them out. Beneficiaries of party patronage, and often enjoying the confidence of either the Prime Minister or various Ministers of Interior, they had backing enough …

Review Of The Masterworks Of Charles M. Russell: A Retrospective Of Paintings And Sculpture Edited By Joan Carpenter Troccoli, Sarah L. Burt

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Charles M. Russell (1864-1926) has long been celebrated as America's "Cowboy Artist," beloved as much for his charismatic personality as for his authentic portrayal of the Old West. The magnitude of Russell's celebrity may have, at times, overshadowed his artistic achievement, and thus the complexity of cultural themes reflected in his work, the iconographic richness of his art, and the evolving sophistication of his technique may come as revelations to some. These qualities emerge, perhaps more comprehensibly than ever, in The Masterworks of Charles M. Russell, a superb catalogue of the excellent retrospective exhibition organized jointly by the Denver …

Review Of "I Do Not Apologize For The Length Of This Letter": The Mari Sandoz Letters On Native American Rights, 1940-1965 Introduced And Edited By Kimberli A. Lee, Alan Boye

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Novelist, historian, and biographer Mari Sandoz holds a unique position as an authority on the American West. She was born in 1896 in one of the last areas of the West to be settled by whites, the sparse and empty Nebraska Sandhills. Her father befriended many of the Sioux and Cheyennes from the nearby Pine Ridge Reservation. Sandoz grew up hearing the stories of people like He Dog, a close friend of Crazy Horse and brother-in-law of Red Cloud, Wild Hog, the Cheyenne warrior who played a crucial role in the Cheyenne Exodus, Short Bull, Old Cheyenne Woman, and others …

Review Of Historical Atlas Of The American West: With Original Maps By Derek Hayes, J. Clark Archer

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The Historical Atlas of the American West is a visually appealing and well-organized representation of cartographic works thoughtfully selected from several centuries of map making. As demarcated for the Atlas, the American West extends from the eastern borders of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas to the Pacific coasts of California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. While some of the included maps show the entire American West, most depict smaller subregions of interest such as one or a few states or even individual cities or towns. The cartographic scales, map themes, and graphical styles of the maps reproduced vary greatly, …

"We Were Beet Workers, And That Was All" Beet Field Laborers In The North Platte Valley, 1902-1930, Dustin Kipp

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

John and Alex Loos, two brothers who spent their childhood summers working in the beet fields of western Nebraska in the 1910s, suggested that a migrant beet field laborer could become, by the end of one season, "a trusted member of the community."¹ It took years of hard work and saving, but field workers could become farmers. Families could own land and work for their own benefit rather than for the subsistence wages of the migratory laborer. Although locals often viewed them with suspicion as outsiders, German Russian migrants were increasingly encouraged to stay to help build the burgeoning …

Great Plains Quarterly Volume 31 / Number 1 / Winter 2011

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Contents

Book Reviews

Notes and News

Modeling And Surveillance Of Pandemic Influenza Outbreaks, Diana Prieto

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Pandemic outbreaks are unpredictable as to their virus strain, transmissibility, and impact on our quality of life. Hence, the decision support models for mitigation of pandemic outbreaks must be user-friendly and operational, and also incorporate valid estimates of disease transmissibility and severity. This dissertation research is aimed at 1) reviewing the existing pandemic simulation models to identify their implementation gaps with regard to usability and operability, and suggesting research remedies, 2) increasing operability of simulation models by calibrating them via an epidemiological model that estimates infection probabilities using viral shedding profiles of concurrent pandemic and seasonal influenza, and 3) developing …

An Architecture For Global Ubiquitous Sensing, Alfredo Jose Perez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A new class of wireless sensor networks has recently appeared due to the pervasiness of cellular phones with embedded sensors, mobile Internet connectivity, and location technologies. This mobile wireless sensor network has the potential to address large-scale societal problems and improve the people's quality of life in a better, faster and less expensive fashion than current solutions based on static wireless sensor networks. Ubiquitous Sensing is the umbrella term used in this dissertation that encompasses location-based services, human-centric, and participatory sensing applications. At the same time, ubiquitous sensing applications are bringing a new series of challenging problems.

This dissertation proposes …

Cap-And-Trade Modeling And Analysis For Electric Power Generation Systems, Patricio Rocha

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cap-and-trade is the most discussed CO₂ emissions control scheme in the U.S. It is a market-based mechanism that has been used previously to successfully reduce the levels of SO₂ and NO_x emitted by power generators. Since electricity generators are responsible for about 40% of the CO₂ emissions in the U.S., the implementation of CO₂ cap-and-trade will have a significant impact on electric power generation systems. In particular, cap-and-trade will influence the investment decisions made by power generators. These decisions in turn, will affect electricity prices and demand. If the allowances (or emission permits) created by …

Cdte/Cds Thin Film Solar Cells Fabricated On Flexible Substrates, Vasilios Palekis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) is a leading thin film photovoltaic (PV) material due to its near ideal bandgap of 1.45 eV and its high optical absorption coefficient. The typical CdTe thin film solar cell is of the superstrate configuration where a window layer (CdS), the absorber (CdTe) and a back contact are deposited onto glass coated with a transparent electrode.

Substrate CdTe solar cells where the above listed films are deposited in reverse are not common. In this study substrate CdTe solar cells are fabricated on flexible foils.

The properties of the Molybdenum back contact, Zinc Telluride (ZnTe) interlayer and CdTe …

Knowledge Guided Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline (Nurbs) For Supporting Design Intent In Computer Aided Design (Cad) Modeling, Khairan Rajab

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

For many years, incompatible computer-aided design (CAD) packages that are based on Non-uniform Rational B-Spline (NURBS) technology carried out the exchange of models and data through either neutral file formats (IGES or STEP) or proprietary formats that have been accepted as quasi industry standards. Although it is the only available solution at the current time, the exchange process most often produces unsatisfactory results. Models that are impeccable in the original modeling system usually end up with gaps or intersections between surfaces on another incompatible system. Issues such as loss of information, change of data accuracy, inconsistent tolerance, and misinterpretation of …

Autonomous Mobility And Manipulation Of A 9-Dof Wmra, William Garrett Pence

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The wheelchair-mounted robotic arm (WMRA) is a 9-degree of freedom (DoF) assistive system that consists of a 2-DoF modified commercial power wheelchair and a custom 7-DoF robotic arm. Kinematics and control methodology for the 9-DoF system that combine mobility and manipulation have been previously developed and implemented. This combined control allows the wheelchair and robotic arm to follow a single trajectory based on weighted optimizations. However, for the execution of activities of daily living (ADL) in the real-world environment, modified control techniques have been implemented.

In order to execute macro ADL tasks, such as a "go to and pick up" …

Mining Associations Using Directed Hypergraphs, Ramanuja N. Simha

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis proposes a novel directed hypergraph based model for any database. We introduce the notion of association rules for multi-valued attributes, which is an adaptation of the definition of quantitative association rules known in the literature. The association rules for multi-valued attributes are integrated in building the directed hypergraph model. This model allows to capture attribute-level associations and their strength. Basing on this model, we provide association-based similarity notions between any two attributes and present a method for finding clusters of similar attributes. We then propose algorithms to identify a subset of attributes known as a leading indicator that …

A Dynamic Hierarchical Web-Based Portal, Matthew James Spaulding

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A dynamic hierarchical web-based portal was created to house a suite of web-based supply chain management applications. The portal was designed in a hierarchical manner to match the structure of large companies. Administrators of the the portal have the ability to form the portal in such a way to mimic the existing structure of their company. Access rights to the applications in the portal may be granted or denied per division and the users of the portal are placed in these divisions based on their duty in the company. In addition, users are granted roles which dictate their ability to …

Heterogeneous Modeling Of Medical Image Data Using B-Spline Functions, Olya Grove

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ongoing developments in the field of medical imaging modalities have pushed the frontiers of modern medicine and biomedical engineering, prompting the need for new applications to improve diagnosis, treatment and prevention of diseases.

Biomedical data visualization and modeling rely predominately on manual processing and utilization of voxel and facet based homogeneous models. Biological structures are naturally heterogeneous and in order to accurately design and biomimic biological structures, properties such as chemical composition, size and shape of biological constituents need to be incorporated in the computational biological models.

Our proposed approach involves generating a density point cloud based on the intensity …

Utilizing Probabilistic Reinforcement To Enhance Participation In Parent Training, Errity Jones

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Parental participation in parent training programs is necessary for success in behavioral parent training. Prior literature has demonstrated probabilistic reinforcement as an effective intervention for improving a wide variety of behaviors. In the present study, a probabilistic reinforcement program (i.e., lottery) was implemented in order to evaluate its efficacy as part of a behavioral parent training program. The behaviors targeted for increase included attendance, participation, homework completion, and performing role-plays or completing in-class assignments for two 10 week Tools for Positive Behavior Change courses. Participants earned lottery tickets for each of the dependent measures, and drawings took place at the …

Stress-Strain Management Of Heteroepitaxial Polycrystalline Silicon Carbide Films, Christopher William Locke

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Silicon carbide (SiC) is one of the hardest known materials and is also, by good fortune, a wide bandgap semiconductor. While the application of SiC for high-temperature and high-power electronics is fairly well known, its utility as a highly robust, chemically-inert material for microelectrical mechanical systems (MEMS) is only beginning to be well recognized. SiC can be grown on both native SiC substrates or on Si using heteroepitaxial growth methods which affords the possibility to use Si micromachining methods to fabricate advanced SiC MEMS devices.

The control of film stress in heteroepitaxial silicon carbide films grown on polysilicon-on-oxide substrates has …

Nonvoters: Doing Nothing To Change The Government They Hate, Geoffrey N. Mciver

Political Science Theses and Capstones

The sporadic and often dismal voter turnout of the American public is often regarded as a hole in the democratic model. This research examines the influence of an individual‘s attitude about their government and how it affects their voting habits. Literature in the past has isolated demographic makeup as the reason for nonvoting, i.e. education or income. However, the nonvoter‘s state of mind in relation to their general feelings toward government and the social contract has been broadly overlooked. A new measure of an individual‘s attitude toward government was created using a collection of survey questions centered on a person‘s …

Introduction To Willa Cather And Modern Cultures [Cather Studies 9], Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

To some, linking Willa Cather to "the modern" or more narrowly to literary modernism still seems an eccentric proposition. As Richard Millington has pointed out, "one will look in vain for Cather's name in the index of most accounts, whether new or old, of the nature and history of Anglo-American modernism" (52). Perhaps she fails to feature in these accounts because in her public pronouncements and certain recurring motifs in her fiction, she appeared to turn her back on modernity. Cather was skeptical about many aspects of the culture that took shape around her in the early decades of the …

Every Week Essays: Every Week’S Demise, Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Every Week Magazine, published from 1915-1918, was a significant magazine phenomenon of its day, with a weekly circulation of 600,000 copies. The contents provide a rich cultural resource for those interested in the World War I home front, popular fiction, advertising, and constructions of race and gender during this period. Until the development of this digital edition, the magazine could be accessed by scholars and readers only with great difficulty due to its embrittled condition and rarity. Magazines provided courtesy of the University of Wisconsin.

Every Week Essays: Interpretive Possibilities, Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Every Week Magazine, published from 1915-1918, was a significant magazine phenomenon of its day, with a weekly circulation of 600,000 copies. The contents provide a rich cultural resource for those interested in the World War I home front, popular fiction, advertising, and constructions of race and gender during this period. Until the development of this digital edition, the magazine could be accessed by scholars and readers only with great difficulty due to its embrittled condition and rarity. Magazines provided courtesy of the University of Wisconsin.

Every Week Essays: The Contents Of Every Week, Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Every Week Magazine, published from 1915-1918, was a significant magazine phenomenon of its day, with a weekly circulation of 600,000 copies. The contents provide a rich cultural resource for those interested in the World War I home front, popular fiction, advertising, and constructions of race and gender during this period. Until the development of this digital edition, the magazine could be accessed by scholars and readers only with great difficulty due to its embrittled condition and rarity. Magazines provided courtesy of the University of Wisconsin.

Regular contributors of advice and commentary included Albert W. Atwood and Burton J. Hendrick. …

Every Week Essays: Associated Sunday Magazines And The Origins Of Every Week, Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Every Week Magazine, published from 1915-1918, was a significant magazine phenomenon of its day, with a weekly circulation of 600,000 copies. The contents provide a rich cultural resource for those interested in the World War I home front, popular fiction, advertising, and constructions of race and gender during this period. Until the development of this digital edition, the magazine could be accessed by scholars and readers only with great difficulty due to its embrittled condition and rarity. Magazines provided courtesy of the University of Wisconsin.