Cultural History Commons^™

Violence, Statecraft, And Statehood In The Early Republic : The State Of Franklin, 1784–1788, Kevin T. Barksdale

History Faculty Research

In December 1784, a small contingent of upper Tennessee Valley political leaders met in Washington County, North Carolina's rustic courthouse to discuss the uncertain postrevolutionary political climate that they believed threatened their regional political hegemony, prosperity and families. The Jonesboro delegates fatefully decided that their backcountry communities could no longer remain part of their parent state and that North Carolina's westernmost counties (at the time Washington, Sullivan and Greene counties) must unite and form America's fourteenth state.

The Role Of Revolution And Rioting In French Wine's Relationship With Place, Brian Murphy

Books/Book Chapters

French Wine: The role of revolution and rioting in establishing it’s relationship with “place”

Many of the rules and regulations surrounding the production of French wines have been heavily debated and criticised over the years. They have been accused of limiting French wine’s ability to compete with new world marketing successes. Appellation d’Origine Controlee represents France’s much imitated system of controlling both geographically based names and indeed production variables associated with these AOCs in terms of “place”.

Prior to the development of the Appellation d’origine controlee laws in 1937, France bore witness to two key wine related violent episodes in …

Perpetrators, Bystanders, And Rescuers: Popular Attitudes Towards Ottoman Christians During The Armenian Genocide, Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Articles and Research

This article explores the popular attitudes of Ottoman Muslims (mainly Turks and Kurds) and foreign residents (German, US, British, so on) towards their Christian (mainly Armenian and Syriac) friends, neighbours, and countrymen during the tragic events that occurred in WWI Ottoman Empire, known in Western scholarship as the Armenian genocide. Overall, the attitudes of Ottoman Muslims and foreign residents towards local Christians fit into the perpetrators/ bystanders/rescuers paradigm and varied from active persecution to indifference, opportunism, and sometimes help and rescue.

Can We Laugh? Jewish American Comedy's Expression Of Anxiety In A Time Of Change, 1965-1973, Emily Schorr Lesnick

American Studies Honors Projects

This Honors project is a site of intersection of my academic and activist interests in interrogating Whiteness, my social identity as a cultural Jewish American, and my creative passions in comedy performance. The tragicomic films The Graduate, Goodbye, Columbus, and Annie Hall of the 1960s and 1970s articulate the painful process of Jewish self- and group-definition in relation to dominant culture amidst fractures amongst Jews and external hostility and invitation. The collision of Jews’ long history of humor as a cultural practice and the turbulence and ambivalence of the post-World War II moment facilitated a space for Jewish …

Human Rights And Literature (Fall 2011), Robert D. Tobin

Syllabi

In this class, we will be reading literary and cultural documents to contemplate the concept of “human rights.” What rights do all humans have, simply by virtue of being human? Who counts as human? Do current understandings of human rights exclude some people? Do humans have more rights than other species? How do questions of gender and sexuality fit into the discussion of human rights?

As we seek to answer these questions, we will trace the development of human rights discourses from the Enlightenment to the present, looking at literature from a variety of cultures and human rights documents from …

Gastronomic Literature, Modern Cuisine And The Development Of French Bourgeois Identity From 1800 To 1850, Jane Thompson

History Honors Papers

No abstract provided.

The Olympics In East Asia: Nationalism, Regionalism, And Globalism On The Center Stage Of World Sports, William W. Kelly, Susan Brownell

CEAS Occasional Publication Series

Yale CEAS Occasional Publication Series - Volume 3

Narratives Of Development: Models, Spectacles, And Calculability In Nick Cullather's The Hungry World, Nicole Sackley

History Faculty Publications

To describe The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia as a history of the green revolution does not begin to convey the ambition and rewards of Nick Cullather's new book. In less than three hundred pages, Hungry World offers a detailed diplomatic, intellectual, and cultural history that spans more than a century and three continents. Cullather deepens and revises our understanding of the "green revolution" as a history of the Rockefeller Foundation and its "transfer" of agricultural technology from Mexico to Asia, in part by showing how the green revolution's intellectual and political construction involved a …

Review Of Seldom Seen: A Journey Into The Great Plains By Patrick Dobson, Geitner Simmons

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The Great Plains often are dismissed as ho-hum fly-over country lacking in significance or appeal. But in the skillfully written narrative of Seldom Seen, Patrick Dobson describes how he finds the Plains a source of emotional sustenance and, ultimately, rejuvenation. Seldom Seen is the story of the author's trek, largely by foot, from Kansas City, Missouri, to Helena, Montana. Along the way Dobson-- a 32-year old blue-collar worker seeking relief from a variety of intense personal frustrations-meets a long string of open-hearted if often dirt-poor souls and comes to find hope in what he'd largely considered a "mean and …

The American Imprint On Alberta Politics, Nelson Wiseman

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Characteristics assigned to America's classical liberal ideology-rugged individualism, market capitalism, egalitarianism in the sense of equality of opportunity, and fierce hostility toward centralized federalism and socialismare particularly appropriate for fathoming Alberta's political culture. In this article, I contend that Alberta's early American settlers were pivotal in shaping Alberta's political culture and that Albertans have demonstrated a particular affinity for American political ideas and movements. Alberta came to resemble the liberal society in Tocqueville's Democracy in America: high status was accorded the selfmade man, laissez-faire defined the economic order, and a multiplicity of religious sects competed in the market for …

Review Of Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, And Healing By Jo-Ann Episkenew, Keavy Martin

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Metis scholar and activist Jo-Ann Episkenew examines the potential of literature to assist Canadian Indigenous communities in healing from the impacts of colonial government policy in this, her first scholarly monograph. While the discourse of "healing" has been a central feature of both bureaucratic and academic discussions of Indigenous issues since the 1990s, Episkenew's study appears at a time when the detrimental effects of policies like the residential school system are again gaining public attention as Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission gets underway. The book contains a useful overview of the government interventions that have impinged upon Indigenous peoples in …

Review Of Replenishing The Earth: The Settler Revolution And The Rise Of The Anglo-World, 1783-1939 By James Belich, Jon Lauck

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

During the early modern era, the great powers of the world enjoyed a rough parity of strength. But in the nineteenth century, during a great "divergence," the Anglo-American world gained ground over the others. Some historians have attributed this to inherent advantages of Anglo-Saxon culture, others to the natural resources of the Anglo world, and others to its growth-promoting institutions. James Belich believes historians must also consider another factor, what he calls the Anglo-American "Settler Revolution" of the nineteenth century.

Other European powers, Belich argues, did not have the staying power of the Anglo-American world. The Dutch, for example, had …

Review Of Gateway To The Northern Plains: Railroads And The Birth Of Fargo And Moorhead By Carroll Engelhardt, Kimberly K. Porter

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

One worries about the editorial staff at the University of Minnesota Press in determining to accept the manuscript for Gateway to the Northern Plains. You can almost see them scratching their heads, frustrated with the job of marketing a volume that could belong in every section of every bookstore and could find an appropriate home on the shelf of any scholar of the American experience. Indeed, that is the delightful challenge of Carroll Engelhardt's labor of love. Engelhardt, an emeritus professor of history at Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota, clearly devoted years of research and writing to the preparation of …

Review Of First Nations, First Thoughts: The Impact Of Indigenous Thought In Canada Edited By Annis May Timpson, Priscilla Settee

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This timely collection offers perceptive, thought-provoking perspectives on contemporary issues Indigenous communities face. Privatization, governance, language preservation, museums, public policy, and official knowledge are some of the topics the book tackles. Written by a range of seasoned and emerging scholars, First Nations, First Thoughts is organized into five subject areas (each containing two or three papers): challenging dominant discourses; oral histories; cultural representation; governance; and political self-determination. The title is a clever response to Thomas Flanagan's First Nations? Second Thoughts (2000). One of the articles rebuts the content of this infamous, rather anti-Indigenous-sovereignty book. Because Flanagan is consulted on issues …

Review Of Skylark Meets Meadowlark: Reimagining The Bird In British Romantic And Contemporary Native American Literature By Thomas C. Gannon, Frederick White

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Thomas Gannon's verve animates his investigation and contrast of avian images from British Romantic poets and Native American authors. In the introductory chapter, he provides a steadfast theoretical basis grounded in a syncretic psychological-ecotheory. In the next two chapters he meticulously constructs his view that the British Romantic poets' attempt to connect with nature, specifically birds, at the surface level seems accomplished but, with deeper pondering, falls far short of being convincing. Gannon exposes how western expression of nature cannot capture any essence of subject-subject, that is "I-Thou." The second and third chapters explore examples to show avian representation is …

Review Of White Mother To A Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, And The Removal Of Indigenous Children In The American West And Australia, 1880-1940 By Margaret D. Jacobs, Lynette Russell

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Comparative studies involving similar historical events in different locales have been neglected over the last few decades, in my opinion to the detriment of history. It is indeed gratifying to see this change with the publication recently of several important comparative works. Two that compare North America with Australia are Penelope Edmonds's outstanding Urbanizing Frontiers: Indigenous Peoples and Settlers in 19th-Century Pacific Rim Cities (2010) and Katherine Ellinghaus's Taking Assimilation to Heart: Marriages of White Women and Indigenous Men in Australia and the United States, 1887-1937 (2006). To this we can now add Margaret D. Jacobs's important White Mother to …

Review Of Everything You Know About Indians Is Wrong By Paul Chaat Smith, Laura M. Furlan

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In his recent collection of essays, associate curator at the National Museum of the American Indian Paul Chaat Smith argues for a reorientation of knowledge about Indian peoples. The essays, all previously published, are sometimes autobiographical, sometimes humorous, and range in topic from Ishi to the Alcatraz occupation. In "The Big Movie," for example, Smith takes on films that feature Indians, from the first moving picture made by Thomas Edison in 1894, Sioux Ghost Dance, to The Searchers, Last of the Mohicans, and Dances with Wolves. Indians, Smith writes, have become "a kind of national mascot." These …

Moneneheo And Naheverien Cheyenne And Mennonite Sewing Circles, Convergences And Conflicts, 1890-1970, Kimberly D. Schmidt

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Marie Gerber Petter was skeptical. Born in the Swiss Jura Mountains, she knew that one does not find water in high places. It was 1893 when Marie and her husband, Rodolphe Petter, came to North America for the express purpose of bringing Christianity to Native Americans. After studying English and visiting Mennonite churches in Indiana, Ohio, and Kansas to garner monetary support for their work among the Southern Cheyenne, they made the forty-mile journey from Darlington, Oklahoma Territory, to an area near present-day Hammon by covered wagon. She was in need of water. When she asked, the local Cheyenne chief, …

Review Of Art As Performance, Story As Criticism: Reflections On Native Literary Aesthetics By Craig S. Womack, Mark Rifkin

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Art as Performance, Story as Criticism is a grand experiment. In it, Womack plays with the possibilities of critical form as well as analytic content. One of the commonplaces of Native literary studies is that knowledge is made through story, so artistic production should count as a means of studying the world. Following this line of thought, Womack here blends story with more conventional scholarship, creating a multilayered counterpoint that conveys more the sense of an opening to a conversation than the self-enclosure that can emanate from thesis-driven arguments. In this vein, the pieces collected here-ranging from new short …

Review Of Our Boys: A Perfect Season On The Plains With The Smith Center Redmen By Joe Drape, John R. Wunder

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The best book on Great Plains sports is H. G. Bissinger's Friday Night Lights (1990). That classic has spawned a critically acclaimed television series and numerous awards. FNL not only told the story of a football season at Odessa Permian High School in urban West Texas; it also asked and answered some very big questions that concerned high school athletic corruption, coaching pressures, cheerleader/ football player interaction, school integration, local community politics, treatment of players of color, Texas's new rules prohibiting playing with failing grades, pressures on teachers, drugs, player abuse, and on and on. It remains a beautifully written …

Review Of The Western Landscape In Cormac Mccarthy And Wallace Stegner: Myths Of The Frontier By Megan Riley Mcgilchrist, Harry F. Thompson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Megan Riley McGilchrist sees the Vietnam War and the cultural upheaval it represents as a watershed event in understanding how the western novel treats the theme of landscape. She constructs her analysis through the writings of Wallace Stegner and the western novels of Cormac McCarthy, the former retaining a belief in the innate goodness of the land and the latter rejecting the benevolence of the natural world. McGilchrist argues that, as the fulfillment of the frontier ethos, the Vietnam War-absent in Stegner but present in McCarthy-changed life in the mythimbued West. For McGilchrist, elements of the mythic West, both abhorrent …

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 …