History Commons^™

Before We Go: Vacation Reading Suggestions

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

China Beat will be taking a holiday break until January 3. Before we move on to 2011, though, here’s a short round-up of pieces from 2010 that you shouldn’t miss:

• We’re still doing a bit of catching up as we recover from the end of the fall academic quarter, so please forgive us for being a bit behind on covering both the recent tensions between North and South Korea and also the controversial release of documents by WikiLeaks. On North Korea, read Evan Osnos, “Lips and Teeth,”and listen to Mary Kay Magistad of PRI’s The World. For a China …

Reading Round-Up, December 17

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

It seems there’s been an outpouring of writing about China lately—so much that we actually haven’t been able to keep up with it all (especially since for the China Beat editors, December brings with it the madness and mayhem that mark the end of an academic term). So, before we settle in for the holiday break, we thought we’d bring you a pair of reading round-ups that point to all the pieces we wish we’d been able to write during the past few weeks. We’ll post part I (focusing on Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Peace prize win) today and part II …

One Hundred Years Of Controversy, Paul R. Katz

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

“History is never for itself; it is always for someone” — Keith Jenkins, Rethinking History, p. 16

Controversies about the past are nothing new to modern Taiwan, but this one is something completely different, centering not on how to remember the Japanese colonial era, the 228 Incident, or the White Terror, but the forthcoming 100th anniversary of the Republic of China’s founding on January 1, 1912 (建國百年).

At the center of the current sturm und drang is Taiwan’s Academia Historica (國史館), the putative successor to the imperial Historiography Institute (same Chinese name) established from the Song to Qing dynasties. In …

In Case You Missed It: Chop Suey, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In 1961, Julia Child published Mastering the Art of French Cooking, among the most celebrated cookbooks of the 20th century. Designed to demystify the intricacies of French cuisine and convince the “servantless American cook” that she could conquer any of the recipes contained therein, Child’s book helped to bring French food out of upscale city restaurants and into the kitchens of families across the country.

Sixteen years earlier, Buwei Yang Chao had taken on a similar task, though she met with much less widespread success than Child would. Chao’s How to Cook and Eat in Chinese (1945) did not only …

How One Family Created Chinese America, Angilee Shah

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Hyphenated cultures seem to be a natural part of California’s landscape today, but it wasn’t always so. The Lucky Ones by Mae Ngai offers a fresh look at California history by reconstructing the lives of immigrant and second generation pioneers who lived between cultures when it was not such a common phenomenon. Ngai’s narrative brings Chinese Americans into a richer tradition of historical storytelling by humanizing an ambivalent, middle-class immigrant family, situating their lives within the more well-known histories of Chinese laborers and those who suffered from the 1882 Exclusion Act.

Ngai is a professor and immigration historian at Columbia …

New Release: Heart Of Buddha, Heart Of China

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

James Carter, Professor of History at Saint Joseph’s University and Chief Editor of the journal Twentieth-Century China, has recently published Heart of Buddha, Heart of China: The Life of Tanxu, a Twentieth Century Monk (Oxford University Press). To explore the life and work of this extraordinary individual, Carter embarked on a series of “travels with Tanxu,” spending time in Buddhist temples from Harbin to Hong Kong (with stops in Qingdao, Ningbo, Yingkou, and Shanghai along the way). Here, in an excerpt from the prologue to his book, Carter explains the challenges he encountered in tracing the life of Tanxu, an …

Year In Review: Books, Books, Books

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

As 2010 draws to a close, many media outlets have begun releasing their year-end “best of” lists. We always take a careful look at these to see which China-related titles appear, and have seen more than a few familiar names pop up. At the New York Times, the “100 Notable Books of 2010” include Peter Hessler’sCountry Driving and Yunte Huang’s biography of Charlie Chan, as well as Pearl Buck in China: Journey to The Good Earth by Hilary Spurling. Spurling’s work is also celebrated by Margaret Drabble at The Guardian, while both Pankaj Mishra and AS Byatt include Yiyun Li’s …

Hu Jingcao On Liang Sicheng And Lin Huiyin

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In October, CCTV’s high-definition channel broadcast a new six-hour, eight-episode documentary on the famous husband-and-wife duo Liang Sicheng (梁思成, 1901-1972) and Lin Huiyin (林徽因, 1904-1955). Liang is renowned as a pioneering architectural historian, Lin as a writer, but their presence in China’s historical consciousness defies easy categorization. Both came from prominent families (Sicheng’s father was Liang Qichao, the scholar and reformer of the late Qing and early Republican period) and they left multifaceted legacies (their son, the noted environmentalist Liang Congjie, died in Beijing on October 28; American artist Maya Lin is Huiyin’s niece.)

Titled “Liang Sicheng Lin Huiyin,” the …

Re-Reading Chalmers Johnson, Daniel Little

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Chalmers Johnson, co-founder and president of the Japan Policy Research Institute at the University of San Francisco and long-time professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley and University of California, San Diego, died on November 20, 2010. (Here are several notices — The Atlantic, theNew York Times, and The Nation.) In the past ten years or so Johnson has become widely known for his critical books about American empire (Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (2004), The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (2005), Nemesis: The Last Days of the …

Liang Congjie, Public Intellectuals, And Civil Society In China, Guobin Yang

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Liang Congjie, professor of history and founder of China’s first environmental NGO, Friends of Nature, died on October 28, 2010 at the age of 78. His death was widely noted in the Chinese and international media: obituaries appeared in theNew York Times, The Atlantic, and other major English newspapers and magazines. The major web portal Sina.com dedicated a special section on its web site to Professor Liang. Friends of Nature, the organization which Professor Liang co-founded and led for many years, has posted a collection of commemorative essays from his former colleagues, friends, and followers and admirers. Much has been …

The Lost Art Of Interdependency: United Nations Leadership In The Suez Crisis Of 1956 And Its Ramifications In World Affairs, Matthew Walker

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The following study examines the relationship between competing national interests and the implementation of multilateral diplomacy as characterized by the United Nations. Although primary attention focuses on the events Suez Crisis of 1956, the scope of work analyzes this dichotomy from the Suez Canal’s construction to the post-Suez era of the 1960s. Adopting a more comprehensive approach to understanding the crisis and its impact on international diplomacy provides adds a new and timely perspective to scope of the crisis and the complexities of conflict resolution.

In many respects, the diplomatic maneuvering of the nineteenth century remained a constant in diplomatic …

Review Of He Was Some Kind Of A Man: Masculinities In The B Western By Roderick Mcgillis, John M. Clum

Great Plains Quarterly

It takes something of a masochist to watch close to two hundred B westerns, but Roderick McGillis claims to have done that in researching this book. For those of you who are not film history buffs, a B movie was a cheap, relatively short (sixty to seventy-five minutes), formulaic genre film made to be the second half of a double feature. A lot of B movies were westerns because they were cheap and popular, particularly with boys and young men. They had their own stars, many of whom moved on to television, which killed the B movie: Roy Rogers, Gene …

Wish List Wilderness Endgame In The Black Hills National Forest, Robert Wellman Campbell

Great Plains Quarterly

In January 1979 Dave Foreman loosened his tie, propped his cowboy boots up on his desk, and brooded awhile on RARE II. In a second try at Roadless Area Review and Evaluation (RARE), the u.s. Forest Service had just spent two years deciding once and for all how much of its undeveloped land should be designated Wilderness. To Foreman, a Washington executive of the Wilderness Society, RARE II tasted of bitter defeat, and he lonesomely "popped the top on another Stroh's" as he brooded. The Forest Service had just recommended increasing its Wilderness acres from 18 million to 33 million, …

"If The Lord's Willing And The Creek Don't Rise" Flood Control And The Displaced Rural Communities Of Irving And Broughton, Kansas, Robin A. Hanson

Great Plains Quarterly

In this case study, I examine how the residents of two displaced rural Kansas towns, and their descendants, exhibit a sense of identity common to small farm communities throughout the Great Plains, and how tenacious these ties are even after the physical reminder of their communal bonds no longer exists. By examining the struggles to survive faced by these two towns, Irving and Broughton, the resiliency of the people who called them home, and the continuing expression of community solidarity by the individuals associated with them, I propose that the individuals living within these communities created a transcendental identity similar …

Review Of Delaware Tribe In A Cherokee Nation By Brice Obermeyer, Dawn G. Marsh

Great Plains Quarterly

The federal acknowledgment process is a highly contested procedure under the best of circumstances. For the Delaware Tribe of Oklahoma the negotiations to establish their national identity while living within the physical boundaries of the Cherokee Nation continue to divide its members and challenge modern interpretations of enrollment. Brice Obermeyer, a cultural anthropologist at Emporia State University and NAGPRA representative for the Delaware Tribe, provides a comprehensive discussion of this historic relationship.

Obermeyer summarizes the histories that brought the Cherokees and Delawares to eastern Oklahoma and the legal efforts to establish an independent Delaware identity since the 1867 Cherokee-Delaware Agreement. …

Review Of The Girl In Saskatoon: A Meditation On Friendship, Memory And Murder By Sharon Butala, Susan Maher

Great Plains Quarterly

On a warm May evening in 1962, young Saskatoon resident Alexandra Wiwcharuk left her flat to mail some letters and enjoy a little time on the banks of the South Saskatchewan River before reporting in for her night shift as a nurse at City Hospital. Sitting near a weir, she was within sight of a parking area and city streets. Many others were out that evening, sharing Alex's delight in heat and late sun on a holiday weekend, walking the paths, laughing over jokes and shared gossip, watching children play, and soaking in the city scene. But none of them …

Review Of Faces Of The Frontier: Photographic Portraits From The American West, 1845-1924 By Frank H. Goodyear Iii, With An Essay By Richard White And Contributions By Maya E. Foo And Amy L. Baskette, Mary Murphy

Great Plains Quarterly

The rise of photography in the United States coincided with the spread of Manifest Destiny, and this handsome exhibit catalogue presents a veritable photographic who's who of the men (and a few women) who were pivotal actors in both the conquest and representation of the American West. The National Portrait Gallery organized the exhibition, Faces of the Frontier, in 2009, with travels to the San Diego Historical Society and the Gilcrease Museum in 2010. The book consists of essays by curator Frank H. Goodyear III and Richard White and the portraits themselves, accompanied by biographical captions.

Four thematic sections …

Review Of Dakota Philosopher: Charles Eastman And American Indian Thought By David Martinez, Gwen W. Westerman

Great Plains Quarterly

As a Dakota man, Charles Alexander Eastman (1858-1939) carried the values and history of his people into a rapidly changing world at the beginning of the twentieth century. Most often noted for his contributions as a narrator of Dakota life on the Great Plains in Indian Boyhood and From the Deep Woods to Civilization, Eastman was also an intellectual and an activist who worked diligently to address contemporary issues of Indian rights-efforts now brought into a new light in Dakota Philosopher: Charles Eastman and American Indian Thought.

Great Plains Quarterly Volume 30 / Number 4 / Fall 2010

Great Plains Quarterly

Contents

Book Reviews

Notes and News

Review Of Nicholas Black Elk: Medicine Man, Missionary, Mystic By Michael F. Steltenkamp, Dale Stover

Great Plains Quarterly

In Nicholas Black Elk: Medicine Man, Missionary, Mystic, Michael Steltenkamp explains that because of his chance acquaintance with Black Elk's daughter, Lucy Looks Twice, who "wanted people to know about his [Black Elk's] life as a catechist, I became the biographer of his life in the twentieth century." The author claims that his earlier book, Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala (1993), which reports Lucy's version of her father's life, "showed how this otherwise stereo typically Plains Indian medicine man assumed a Christian identity, and how this was the religious legacy for which he was most remembered within …

Review Of Addie Of The Flint Hills: A Prairie Child During The Depression (1915-1935) By Adaline Sorace, Karen Manners Smith

Great Plains Quarterly

In her early nineties, decades after she had left the Kansas Flint Hills, Adaline Beedle Sorace sat down with her daughter to write her memoirs. With extraordinarily vivid recall, she evokes the place and the people of her youth, weaving the strands of a family and personal saga that stretches from the 1860s to the 1930s.

"Addie" Sorace's maternal forebears, the pioneering RogIer family, were German immigrants who settled in Chase County, Kansas, in the 1860s. Over the decades, the Roglers acquired thousands of acres of rolling grassland and became one of the wealthiest and most influential cattle ranching families …

Review Of Taming The Land: The Lost Postcard Photographs Of The Texas High Plains By John Miller Morris, Anne E. Peterson

Great Plains Quarterly

The advent of the real photographic postcard (RPPC) and the burgeoning growth in the early twentieth century of the Texas Panhandle area of the southern Great Plains coincide. More than 100,000 "optimists" spilled into the region after 1906. The frontier receded as farmsteads grew around railroad towns. The era also witnessed a surge in popularity of the real photographic postcard from 1906 into the 1920s, mailed by the tens of thousands and collected in albums documenting the region. As the population grew, photographers increasingly worked for land developers making images of farmland and also of excursionists traveling to see the …

Review Of Indian Tribes Of Oklahoma: A Guide By Blue Clark, Ron Mccoy

Great Plains Quarterly

Oklahoma's license plates, which formerly displayed an Osage shield, now depict a representation of Native son Allan Houser's evocative sculpture of a fellow Apache preparing to fire an arrow at the sky. The legend running across the bottom of the plate reads: "Native America." This is an apt statement about Oklahoma, site of pre-Columbian Indian settlements, westernmost extension of Mississippian mound building cultures, home for Kiowa and Comanche buffalo hunters, and adopted land of Cherokees and others forced to abandon familiar stomping grounds east of the Mississippi River. On a per capita basis, Oklahoma boasts the nation's largest Native American …

Review Of Crisscrossing Borders In Literature Of The American West Edited By Reginald Dyck And Cheli Reutter, Linda K. Karell

Great Plains Quarterly

With its uninspired Pepto-Bismol pink-colored cover, Crisscrossing Borders in the Literature of the American West might escape attention. That would be a loss because this new collection, edited by Reginald Dyck and Cheli Reutter, is a striking series of essays that simultaneously argue for and model new postnational and transnational approaches to western literary studies. In the introduction, Dyck asks, "Is it possible to have a western literary studies that recognizes the many forms of difference that create borders within and around the region while neither reifying those borders nor discounting their power?" The strategies employed by the various authors …

Review Of Charles Deas And 1840s America By Carol Clark, With Contributions By Joan Carpenter Troccoli, Frederick E. Hoxie, And Guy Jordan, Gail E. Husch

Great Plains Quarterly

His known works are not many-ninety-eight paintings, drawings, and prints are listed in Carol Clark's catalogue at the end of this richly documented volume-and almost half have not been located. Most of the artist's extant paintings were produced between 1833 and 1849. By the age of thirty, Charles Deas (1818-1867) was disturbed enough to require institutionalization; he spent the rest of his days in one asylum or another. With a career of such apparently limited scope and scale, one might wonder whether the artist deserves the attention he is given in this book and in the exhibition at the Denver …

Review Of All Our Stories Are Here: Critical Perspectives On Montana Literature Edited By Brady Harrison, Sue Hart

Great Plains Quarterly

This remarkable collection of essays offers something for every reader interested in Montana literature, from the well read to newcomers to the field. All the contributors are literary scholars, but some of their subject matter might come as a surprise. For example, Nancy Cook examines romance writers' use of Montana as a setting in her essay, pointing out in a footnote that despite the number of young, handsome ranch owners available in the pages of such books, "the average age of a farm/ranch operator in Montana [in 1997] was fifty-four, with the number of men under age thirty-four about 0.5 …

Review Of Writing Indian, Native Conversations By John Lloyd Purdy, Geraldine Mendoza Gutwein

Great Plains Quarterly

Writing Indian, Native Conversations provides keen discussion across three decades of Native American literature in the twentieth century along with consideration of literature in the new millennium. Interviews with well-known Native American scholars and authors such as Paula Gunn Allen, Simon Ortiz, Gerald Vizenor, Sherman Alexie, and Louis Owens provide a foreground from which Purdy delves more deeply into the works of Silko, Welch, Erdrich, King, Vizenor, and others. The critical, theoretical framework from which he analyzes the works is based on a construct that has at its core the assumption that "we all come to a work of literature …

Review Of Lanterns On The Prairie: The Blackfeet Photographs Of Walter Mcclintock Edited By Steven L. Grafe, With Contributions By William E. Farr, Sherry L. Smith, And Darrell Robes Kipp, Brian W. Dippie

Great Plains Quarterly

Walter McClintock (1870-1949) is principally known for two books, The Old North Trail; or Life, Legends and Religion of the Blackfeet Indians (1910) and Old Indian Trails (1923). Both are illustrated with McClintock's photographs, The Old North Trail generously so. They convey an idealized vision of the traditional Blackfeet culture that captivated McClintock when, as a Yale graduate aspiring to a career in forestry, he visited the Blackfeet reservation in Montana in 1896. On subsequent visits through 1912 his collection grew to over 2,000 photographs, and he established himself as an authority on the tribe, delivering lectures in America and …

Review Of "I Am A Man": Chief Standing Bear's Journey For Justice By Joe Starita, John M. Coward

Great Plains Quarterly

On the night of January 2, 1879, Standing Bear and thirty other Ponca men, women, and children slipped away from their disease-ridden new home in Indian Territory. Standing Bear was on a mission, leading his band back to the tribe's ancestral lands along the Nebraska-South Dakota border where he could honor his dying son's last wish, to be buried near the sacred chalk bluffs above the Missouri River.

As author Joe Starita explains, Standing Bear's journey was plagued by subzero temperatures and gales. When their Omaha Indian friends went out to meet them 600 miles and two months later, Starita …

Review Of Border To Border: Historic Quilts And Quiltmakers Of Montana By Annie Hanshew, Barbara Caron

Great Plains Quarterly

State-wide efforts to document quilts began with the Kentucky project in 1981; by 2010 more than fifty books reported the findings of projects in thirty-seven states. Border to Border is the culmination of the Montana Historic Quilt Project, which began in 1987 and ultimately registered more than 2,000 quilts. A perceptive introduction by Mary Murphy, professor of history at Montana State University - Bozeman, places Montana quilts within a wider context not only of needlework and women's roles, but also of westward expansion, industrialization, transportation networks, consumerism, fairs and expositions, and other state and world events. Murphy commends the Montana …