Cultural History Commons^™

Review Of Like No Other Place: The Sandhills Of Nebraska Photographs And Text By David A. Owen, Drake Hokanson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Our collective understanding of place benefits greatly from the work of careful observers/ interpreters/writers/photographers who ultimately blend narrative and photographs into an explication of the nature of a region, a county, a town, a neighborhood, or a highway into a book of substance. Such books can bring us far more than straight geography, journalism, sociology, anthropology, or history can alone. Done right, the very cut of the wind and timbre of voices come through, making the place not only clear, but real.

Like No Other Place combines Owen's narrative about time, people, and place in the Nebraska Sandhills with his …

Review Of Native American Performance And Representation Edited By S. E. Wilmer, T. Christopher Aplin

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Modern Native American artistic performances originated in the widespread North American ceremonial complexes that combined community-based oral tradition and musical practice with the visual performative arts. Growing out of a 2002 "Ritual and Performance" workshop hosted by editor S. E. Wilmer, Native American Performance and Representation illuminates the links that bind American and Canadian Indigenous traditions to their correlate modernities, their diverse ceremonial rituals to expressive artistic performances. This edited volume casts its net broadly, attempting to "review and assess the changing nature of Native performance strategies in a multicultural society." But it essentially focuses on post-1960s theatrical performances and …

Review Of Clearing A Path: New Ways Of Seeing Traditional Indigenous Art Edited By Carmen Robertson And Sherry Farrell Racette, Mary Longman

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This exhibition catalogue celebrates the rich and diverse traditional art works made by Aboriginal and Metis artists living in Saskatchewan. These works reveal the seamless historical continuum of art practice on the Plains, from antler and bone carvings and porcupine quill work to beadwork in both oldstyle geometric and abstracted symbolism and to Metis floral designs.

Horacepoolaw Photographer,Mentor,Grandfather, Thomas Poolaw

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

There are at least 2,000 silver nitrate negatives in the Horace Poolaw collection, and as many stories to go along with them. If you begin to talk about one image, it leads from that story to the next, and the next, and pretty soon two or three hours have gone by. Rather than discussing in detail the images in the Horace Poolaw collection, I would like to discuss Horace Poolaw the man-a complex yet loving individual who was much more than just a photographer. It is still difficult for me to talk about a person whose influence helped shape my …

Modernity, Multiples, And Masculinity Horace Poolaw's Postcards Of Elder Kiowa Men, Laura E. Smith

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Many Indians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century commodified aspects of their cultures in order to make a living and sometimes present their identities, history, and artworks in ways that were satisfying to them. Ten vintage postcards from the Oklahoma Historical Society by Kiowa photographer Horace Poolaw (1906-1984) indicate that he recognized popular tastes for Plains Indian male imagery while both participating in that production and working independently of it. Poolaw printed some of his photographs on postcard stock to sell at local fairs in the early to mid twentieth century. In order for the postcards to appeal …

Review Of Wyoming Range War: The Infamous Invasion Of Johnson County By John W. Davis, Ross F. Collins

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This book offers a thorough indictment of Wyoming Plains cattlemen at the end of the nineteenth century. It is worth asking if we really need another thorough indictment of a group so thoroughly indicted that one more thorough indictment seems like taking yet another swing at a worn-out punching bag. Yes, the Wyoming Stock Growers Association in 1892 was controlled by bad men whose arrogance was reflected in a ridiculous scheme doomed to failure. Asa Shinn Mercer told us that in Banditti of the Plains, published only two years after the Johnson County War. And much of his account …

Review Of Spirit Matters: Ron [Gyo-Zo] Spickett, Artist, Poet, Lay-Priest By Geoffrey Simmins, Leslie Dawn

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Most surveys of modernist art in the Canadian prairie provinces in the 1960s focus on the annual Emma Lake Workshops. These gatherings brought prominent avant-garde artists such as Barnett Newman and Kenneth Noland to Saskatchewan and introduced the controversial American critic Clement Greenberg and his ideas on the development of purity, abstraction, and flatness in painting. Yet not all prairie artists who thought of themselves as modernist followed this path. Many of them have been excluded from published histories.

One such artist is Ron Spickett, the subject of a recent retrospective exhibition curated by Geoffrey Simmins. Simmins's complementary book covers …

Review Of The Death Of Meriwether Lewis: A Historical Crime Scene Investigation By James E. Starrs And Kira Gale, James J. Holmberg

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Was the death of Meriwether Lewis at a backwoods inn on the Natchez Trace on October 11, 1809, suicide or murder? Those on the scene as well as those who knew him best, including Thomas Jefferson and William Clark, all pronounced it a suicide. But was it? Suicide stood as the accepted verdict until the 18408 when the report of the Lewis Monument Committee suggested it was murder. No evidence was given, but once the possibility was raised it grew in popularity and acceptance. Relying on evidence and emotion to reach a conclusion, the two sides in the suicide vs. …

Great Plains Quarterly Volume 31 / Number 2 / Spring 2011

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Contents

Book Reviews

Book Notes

Notes and News

Review Of American Indians And The Fight For Equal Voting Rights By Laughlin Mcdonald, Matthew L. M. Fletcher

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The continuing relevance of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act in the Deep South is an open question for many people, but the importance of the Act in Indian Country cannot seriously be questioned. Laughlin McDonald's powerful book provides a frontline view of the cases brought by American Indians in Nebraska, South Dakota, Montana, and elsewhere. McDonald, the head of the ACLO's Voting Rights Project, himself litigated these cases to successful conclusion on behalf of his Native clients.

In parts of the United States, many state and local governments quietly excluded Indian people from the suffrage until after World War …

Review Of Historic Photos Of Nebraska Text And Captions By Ted Stryker, Charles A. Braithwaite

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

One of the salient features of Great Plains Quarterly is its inclusion of an extensive array of illustrations, maps, and photographs along with most articles. These images are meant to enhance their essays and enrich the reader's understanding of their contexts. Occasionally, pictures say so much that one wishes for more photographs and less text. That's not a weakness of Historic Photos of Nebraska, which contains 192 photographs in its 216 pages.

This is Turner Publishing's second book focused on the region's photographs; the first was Jeffrey Spencer's Historic Photos of Omaha (2007). Using images selected from the Boys …

Acting For The Camera Horace Poolaw's Film Stills Of Family, 1925-1950, Hadley Jerman

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

During the late 1920s, American technology historian Lewis Mumford drafted these words in a manuscript that would become Technics and Civilization. At the same time, Kiowa photographer Horace Poolaw began documenting daily life in southwestern Oklahoma with the very technology Mumford alleged altered the way humanity saw itself. As Poolaw began making dramatically posed, narrative-rich portraits of family members, Mumford asserted that the modern individual now viewed him or herself "as a public character, being watched" by others. He further suggested that humankind developed a "camera-eye" way of looking at the world and at oneself as if continuously on display. …

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

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

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

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

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

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

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

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

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

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

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

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

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

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

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

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

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

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

The Bound "Giddy Multitude": Runaway Indentured Servants Convicts And Slaves In Colonial Virginia, Nicole K. Dressler

History Theses & Dissertations

This thesis explores the social, political, and cultural significance of escaped indentured servants, convict servants, and slaves in colonial Virginia. By analyzing judicial records, letters, diaries, independent documents, and particularly, runaway advertisements, researchers can develop a clearer understanding of bondsmen's activities and identities while gaining valuable insight into the relationship between masters and laborers. As a key group of defiant laborers, runaway servants and slaves engaged in powerful acts of resistance that exposed the precarious nature of the colony's social order and added to planters' worries over labor management and colonial affairs, facilitating Virginia elite's participation in the movement for …

Review Of A Question Of Command: Counterinsurgency From The Civil War To Iraq, Gregory A. Daddis

History Faculty Articles and Research

A review of A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq, by Mark Moyar.

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

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

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

Certainly, NAGPRA demonstrates the most …

The Atomic Testing Museum, Las Vegas, Nevada, Angela Moor

Psi Sigma Siren

The Atomic Testing Museum attempts to interpret history that has barely ended. The controversy and emotion that surround nuclear weapons remain fresh in many Americans‘ minds. The museum must walk a careful line when interpreting such recent history. Few other American history museums offer interpretation of the Cold War, and certainly, the Atomic Testing Museum stands as the sole museum dedicated to atomic testing. As years go by, and the memory of the mushroom cloud floating on the Nevada desert fades, the museum may feel more comfortable in providing a balanced narrative on atomic testing. For now, as retired "Cold …

The Civil War Centennial: Inspiration For The Civil Rights Movement?, John M. Rudy

Interpreting the Civil War: Connecting the Civil War to the American Public

I read Richard Williams' Old Virginia Blog, not because I agree with what he has to say but explicitly because it gets me so corking mad. Interspersed with tea party rants and modern political diatribes, Williams is an interesting (and sometimes frightening) voice of modern Confederatism and Southern exceptionalism.

The Grizzly, March 31, 2011, Katie Callahan, Tim Jordan, Sara Hourwitz, Jarod Groome, Lisa Jobe, Eva Bramesco, Katie Haldeman, Julia Fox, Jessica Orbon, Sarah Bollert, James Shelton, Sean Miller, Kyu Chul Shin, Anna Larouche, Shane Eachus, Christopher Michael

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

SIFE Wins Regionals for Second Year in a Row • Career Webinar Series Comes to Ursinus College • Director Domenick Scudera Presents Two Woody Allen Plays • John Prendergast Talks About Human Rights • "The Vagina Monologues" • Culture Shock While Studying Abroad in Spain • Internship Spotlight: Bob Wise • Opinions: Response to a Past Article; Give Artist a Break; United Nations Take Action Against Gaddafi; It's More Than Fruit: Rant About Women Power • Ursinus Community Celebrates Ground Breaking

Naccs 38th Annual Conference, National Association For Chicana And Chicano Studies

NACCS Conference Programs

Sites of Education for Social Justice
March 30-April 2, 2011
The Westin Pasadena

The Grizzly, March 24, 2011, Katie Callahan, Brett Cohen, Jessica Orbon, Nikhil Popat, Lisa Jobe, Dixon Speaker, Kristen Wampole, Eva Bramesco, Allison Nichols, Sarah Bollert, Traci Johnson, Fran Macera, Anna Larouche, Kyu Chul Shin, Thomas Nucatola, Nick Pane, Sara Hourwitz

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Phi Kappa Sigma Wins Airband 2011 • Music Department Visits Ireland During Spring Break • Students Give Back Through Philadelphia Reads Program • Former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky Speaks • "Playing Favorites" with Bobbi Block • UC Community Comes Together to Break Ground for New Stadium • Planned Parenthood No Longer Able to Provide Services • Jamaica Welcomes Bonner Leaders for Spring Break • Junior Jumpstart • Diversity through Film • Theater Review: "Playing Favorites" • Opinions: Japan Equipped to Rebuild after Natural Disaster; Facing Segregation in the 21st Century Through Campus Programs • Women's Lacrosse Looks for Return …

"...The Way Things Were Back Then": Why Making Excuses For Slavery Doesn't Work, John M. Rudy

Interpreting the Civil War: Connecting the Civil War to the American Public

Presentism. Aside from historical revisionism, it is perhaps the 'epithet' with which the modern historian find themselves branded the most. I've been reading again a series of screeds by Bill Vallante, a Confederate reenactor and SCV member from Commack, NY (thanks to John Hennessy). I've read these pages before, but this time around was struck by the abject vitriol which oozes from the language employed. A line in one piece in particular stood out to me as quite angry:

"Add a heavy dose of presentism (judging or interpreting the past according to the standards of the present), mix thoroughly and …

The Rebel Flag: Offputting Symbol Or Point Of Pride?, John M. Rudy

Interpreting the Civil War: Connecting the Civil War to the American Public

In 2004, Gettysburg College hosted an art exhibit by John Sims, a Florida based artist and ethnomathematician. The exhibit focused on varied recolored versions of the Confederate Flag. The press outrage was quick and damning. I should know, I was quoted in it (in the Civil War News).

Back in 2004, I called the exhibit, "sickening," and condemned the college for, "trying to distance itself from the town by rejecting the Civil War past in which it is steeped." I was wrong. I figured that out no sooner than passing through the doors of the art gallery and viewing …

On Dogs And Ponies And 'Three Days In July' Syndrome (Part 2), John M. Rudy

Interpreting the Civil War: Connecting the Civil War to the American Public

What happened in Chambersburg and Fairfield in April of 1861? Certainly not events which were earth shattering for the nation as a whole. But to the citizens of the bustling southern Pennsylvania urban centers, it was their world. [excerpt]

Youtube Wednesday: Why I'M Celebrating The Civil War 150th (And Why You Should Too), John M. Rudy

Interpreting the Civil War: Connecting the Civil War to the American Public

There's quite a bit of talk within the interpretive community about the word, "celebration." The word is tiptoed around and eschewed. Its use raised ire in Charleston Harbor this past December. These debates over commemoration versus celebration, no doubt, will crop up again and again over the next few years. We, as a community, are nearly afraid of one misstep. We catch our words as they escape our mouths, quickly correcting ourselves every time "celebration" accidentally emerges trips over our teeth. We seem afraid to say that we are celebrating an American bloodbath of biblical proportions. I can understand this …

On Dogs And Ponies And 'Three Days In July' Syndrome (Part 1), John M. Rudy

Interpreting the Civil War: Connecting the Civil War to the American Public

In 1961, Gettysburg played host to a kick-off event for the Civil War Centennial. The town commemorated the sendoff of the Independent Blues, a militia company which marched off to war in the aftermath of the firing on Fort Sumter. The affair was huge. The Diamond was closed off to traffic as actors in old time clothes strutted through a political rally on the square. Spectators watched from the sidewalks as speakers mounted a wagon and gesticulated wildly at the crowd. Gettysburg College's students, wielding trumpet and drum as they did for Football games on Nixon Field, stood in for …