United States History Commons^™

Review Essay: Packing, Unpacking, And Repacking The Cinema Of Guy Maddin, George Melnyk

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Guy Maddin is Canada's most unusual filmmaker. He also happens to have a global cult following for his retro b&w films. His stature as a cult filmmaker began almost a quarter of a century ago, when his sophomore film, Tales from the Gimli Hospital (1988), was launched at a midnight screening in New York that drew audiences for a year. A Winnipegger by birth, he has become that city's most famous filmmaker and one of the few Canadian film directors with an international following. His New York debut led to a regular stint in the 1990s as a film commentator …

Review Of Here You Have My Story: Eyewitness Accounts Of The Nineteenth-Century Central Plains Edited By Richard E. Jensen, Adam R. Hodge

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The history of the central Great Plains is at its heart a vast collection of stories about the complex interactions between humans and the grasslands. When American settlers during the nineteenth century ventured into what had hitherto been Indian country, they found that their fortunes were inextricably bound to the whims of the often harsh Plains environment. In Here You Have My Story: Eyewitness Accounts of the Nineteenth-Century Central Plains, readers have the opportunity to view the challenges and triumphs of settling the Plains of present day Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, and Wyoming through the eyes of those who were …

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 …

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 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 …

Using Euro-American Hunting Data To Assess Western Great Plains Biogeography, 1806-35, Cody Newton

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

Historic accounts from the 19th-century western Great Plains contain significant information on Plains ungulates and other animals, particularly as they relate to provisioning the Euro-American travelers. Using data derived from these accounts, a quantitative assessment of the hunting success of the Pike, Long, Glenn, and Dodge expeditions of the early 19th century is presented to ascertain the conditions of these species in the region. These data are then used to assess historiographic models of bison overhunting. This analysis indicates that the western Southern Plains and western Central Plains had differing trajectories of overhunting explained by temporally variable human and environmental …

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 …

Lack Of Oversight: The Relationship Between Congress And The Fbi, 1907-1975, Aaron Stockham

Dissertations (1934 -)

This study fills a hole left in research about the Federal Bureau of Investigation. While previous authors have examined the Bureau's relationship to the executive branch, especially under its long-time Director, J. Edgar Hoover, comparatively little has been written about the Bureau's relationship with the United States Congress. Using their investigatory and appropriations powers, members of Congress could have maintained stringent oversight of Bureau officials' activities. Instead, members of Congress either deferred to the executive branch, especially presidents and attorneys general, or developed close relationships with Bureau officials based on a shared politics, mainly anti-communism during the Cold War. Examining …

Uncoiling The Modern Sino-American Relationship, Amanda Mcatee

Psi Sigma Siren

For this particular paper I seek to qualify the true nature of the Sino-American relationship as it has developed over the last quarter of the twentieth century. To more fully appreciate the complex relationship that evolved between such seemingly antithetical nations, I will critically review both James Mann‘s About Face: A History of America’s Curious Relationship with China, From Nixon to Clinton and Margaret MacMillan‘s Nixon and Mao: The Week that Changed the World. This paper will specifically focus on evaluating the similarities and inconsistencies between Mann‘s and MacMillan‘s theses, elucidate the structural differences between each author‘s arguments, and …

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 …

Community Control: Civil Rights Resistance In The Mile High City, Summer Burke

Psi Sigma Siren

Black power in the late 1960s was once blamed for the fall of the civil rights movement. The more militant and abrasive black power approach was mistaken for the alternative civil rights movement, contradictory to the progressive approach of nonviolent marches in the South. However, recent scholarship contextualizing black power and the Black Panthers in particular, restructured this paradigm. This move toward a more inclusive approach to studying black resistance across the country steered The Movement out of the Memphis to Montgomery narrative, and instead provides a more textured understanding of black radicalism as a vital aspect of civil rights …

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 Idea Of The Public Library In The United States: Why Is It Important?, Ruth Bernstein

Pitzer Senior Theses

In a 1954 Library Science textbook author Ernestine Rose asked her readers to ponder whether the public library is either “unique and indispensable“ or “incidental and pleasant—the frills on our civic costume”. Over sixty-five years later these opposite constructs are still valid to frame my thesis with the questions, What is important about a library, What does it mean and to whom does it matter?

A Fellowship In Learning: Kalamazoo College, 1833-2008 (Book Review), Julie Mujic

History Faculty Publications

Book review by Julie Mujic.

Francis, Marlene Crandell. A Fellowship in Learning: Kalamazoo College, 1833-2008. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Kalamazoo College, 2008.

Undoing Plessy: Charles Hamilton Houston, Race, Labor, And The Law, Gordon Andrews

Dissertations

Undoing Plessy: Charles Hamilton Houston, Race, Labor, and the Law, 1895--1950, explores the manner in which African Americans countered racialized impediments during the first half of the twentieth century by attacking their legal underpinnings. Specifically, this work explores the professional life of Charles Hamilton Houston, and the degree to which it informs our understanding of change in the pre-Brown era. There were a wide range of forces at work, from individuals, organizations, and institutions, to government in its various forms (local, state, and federal), complicating any strategy to reformulate the parameters of equality. Using both labor and education law as …

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.

Migration, Community, And Stereotype: Shaping Racial Space In The Twentieth-Century Urban West, Stefani Evans

Psi Sigma Siren

African Americans who migrated to western cities in the twentieth century encountered a polyglot mix of Euro Americans, Asians, Latinos, and Native Americans. Diverse western populations dictated that western racial contests over space and power would evolve differently from those in the North or the South. This paper examines the discourse on white, Latino and African American racial landscapes in western cities through themes of migration, community formation, and white stereotypes and community responses to those stereotypes in seven key monographs and two articles published between 1993 and 2005.

Price Ceilings And Rationing: The Base Ingredients Of The Black Market Food Industry In Nevada During World War Ii, Richard B. Keeton

Psi Sigma Siren

After the Empire of Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Americans braced themselves for what would surely be a long, hard-fought war. In World War II, brave young United States soldiers made the ultimate sacrifice across the seas on both the European and Pacific fronts. However, the millions of citizens on domestic soil also made countless sacrifices in a national mobilization to support the war effort. People in Nevada and across the nation gave up everyday conveniences and seemingly ordinary items to show their support for the troops. Government agencies instituted tight rationing guidelines on a variety of consumer goods. Perhaps the …

The Octofoil, April/May/June 2011, Ninth Infantry Division Association

The Octofoil

The Octofoil is the offical publication of the Ninth Infantry Division Association, Inc., an organization formed by the officers and men of the 9th Infantry Division in order to perpetuate the memory of fallen comrades, preserve the esprit de corps of the Division, promote peace and serve as an information bureau about the 9th Infantry Division. The Association is made up of 9th Infantry veterans from WWII and Vietnam, spouses, widows and lineal descendants.

The Question Of Slavery, Jeffrey Rogers Hummel

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Ursinus Magazine, Spring 2011, Wendy Greenberg, Kathryn Campbell, Ellen Labrecque, John E. F. Corson, David Reich, Kaitlyn Ott, John P. Spencer, Elisa Diprinzio

Ursinus Magazine, 1995–Present

Summer bridge program renamed for Dr. Robert Crigler 1956 • Dr. Fong receives national student life award • In tune with poet Robert Pinsky • Mobilizing for human rights • A rock legend's view on art and American culture • Ursinus in the news • New class joins the ranks of Ursinus alumni • Ursinus unites for aid to Japan • The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art upcoming exhibitions • The road to the Rhodes • A field for all seasons • Love is in the air • The new work of public education • Teach for America: …

White And Everything Else: Promotion The 1924 Virginia Racial Integrity Act, J. Casey Gilliam

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

During the early twentieth century, a movement influenced by the tenets of Social Darwinism took root in the United States. Members of the movement used its principles to “improve the American race” through selective breeding. The leaders of the movement adopted the name eugenics and the participants worked at strengthening genetics in two major ways: the sterilization of persons with so-called genetic defects and an effort to eliminate miscegenation. The Commonwealth of Virginia pursued both aspects of eugenics with great fervor. Under the leadership of Dr. Walter Ashby Plecker, Virginia took a radical stance against racial amalgamation through legislation defining …

Reasonable Conversions: Susanna Rowan's Mentoria And Conversion Narratives For Young Readers, Karen Roggenkamp

Faculty Publications

Though not well known, Rowson's Mentoria-a curious conglomeration of thematically-related pieces from multiple genres, including the essay, epistolary novel, conduct book, and fairy tale-offers particularly fertile ground for thinking about the nexus between eighteenth-century didactic books and earlier works for young readers.2 At the heart of Mentoria is a series of letters describing girls who yield, with dire and frequently deadly consequences, to the passionate pleas of male suitors.3 Fallen women populate Rowson's world, and scholars have traditionally read Mentoria within the familiar bounds of the eighteenth-century seduction novel.4 However, Rowson's creation transforms the older tradition of didactic, child-centered conversion …

Networks Of Resistance : Black Virginians Remember Civil War Loyalties, Amanda Kleintop

Honors Theses

On June 22, 1877, William Charity explained his neighborhood’s Civil War loyalties to special commissioner Isaac Baldwin of the Southern Claims Commission (SCC): “The colored people were mostly all for the union.” Charity, a free black Virginian, recognized that “mostly” did not mean all. He went on to suggest: “some of them were blind.” As a self-identified Unionist, Charity had difficulty envisioning a black man who was not loyal to the Union cause and emancipation during the Civil War. Current debates, however, have seized on those black Virginians Charity called “blind,” taking the “mostly” Unionist majority for granted. Like Charity, …

The Death Of Jefferson Davis, Kasey J. Dell

History Theses & Dissertations

Although there are numerous studies of Jefferson Davis and countless more of the Civil War and its consequences, little work has been done to study what the death of Jefferson Davis revealed in terms of the United States' reunification. A political nonperson in the nation's capital, Davis was never fully pardoned and did not receive full rights of citizenship in his lifetime, giving him a unique position in society. Moreover, as the former president of the Confederacy, he was a polarizing figure whose death elicited strong emotions.

The response to Davis's death, almost twenty-five years after the Civil War ended, …

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 …