Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Review Of Mount Rushmore: An Icon Reconsidered By Jesse Lamer & Great White Fathers: The Story Of The Obsessive Quest To Create Mt. Rushmore By John Taliaferro, David A. Wolff

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

DIFFERENT WAYS OF VIEWING A MONUMENT

Wandering through Keystone an evening not long ago and looking above the trees, I could see Mt. Rushmore in the distance. Apparently the lighting ceremony had just ended, and as I looked at those faces of Washington, Jefferson, T. R., and Lincoln, I felt a tinge of excitement. But why? I had seen them many times before. In fact, I spent a summer working for the concessionaire at the monument, serving food in the old Buffalo Dining Room. Every day I stared at those faces as I asked people if they wanted fried chicken …

Forward Pricing Behavior Of Corn And Soybean Producers, Todd Davis, George Patrick, Keith Coble, Thomas Knight, Alan Baquet

Department of Agricultural Economics: Faculty Publications

Forward pricing behavior of random samples of Indiana, Nebraska, and Mississippi crop producers was analyzed using Heckman's two-step limited information maximum likelihood estimation procedure. Producers who forward priced during the 1995-1998 period generally expected to forward price in 1999 using similar techniques. Probit models were estimated for cash forward contracts and taking a direct position in futures or options separately and combined. Results provide limited support for the hypothesis that forward pricing should be analyzed as an adoption decision. Variables reflecting risk attitudes do affect the decision to use forward pricing, while variables related to economic position affect the level …

Predictors Of Social Network Composition Among Homeless And Runaway Adolescents, Kurt D. Johnson, Les B. Whitbeck, Dan R. Hoyt

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Recent research on the social support networks of homeless and runaway youth suggest the social networks of runaway youth are made up largely of transient deviant peer relationships. This paper examined social network characteristics of 428 homeless and runaway adolescents from small to moderate-sized cities in four Midwestern states. We investigated size, homogeneity, and correlates of the composition of the instrumental and emotional support networks as reported by the adolescents. Results showed the networks are considerably heterogeneous, comprised of relationships from home and the street as well as family and non-related adults. Further, the composition of these networks is related …

Columnist Answers Questions From Journalists, Carla Kimbrough

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Faculty Publications

From time to time, this column will feature your questions about professional development. I will strive to answer your questions fully before publication in this space. Thanks to all who have offered questions and, to others, keep them coming.
Before tackling the questions posed to me, ethics is the theme for this issue, and I didn't want to miss an opportunity to discuss ethics and highlight the excellent staff at Poynter Institute.

Predictors Of Earnings For Mexican Americans In The Midwest, Rosalie Torres Stone, Bandana Purkayastha

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

Much of the research on Mexican Americans and earnings has focused on either national samples or on states such as California and Texas. Even though Mexican Americans have become more visible in the Midwest, we know very little about their earnings in the Midwest. Using an individual level sample consisting of data on 1,807 Mexican Americans from the 2000 Integrated 1% Public Use Microdata Series, we examine the extent to which human capital, family status and industry concentration predict earnings. Multivariate analyses reveal that education and years in the U.S. are positively associated with earnings. However, Mexican American women yield …

Evidence Of Holocene Climate Change In A Nebraska Sandhills Wetland, Barbara Nicholson, James B. Swinehart

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

The Nebraska Sandhills consist of 50,000 km² of dunes, currently stabilized by vegetation. Radiocarbon dates of paleosols, blocked paleovalleys, and sand beds found in interdunal wetlands suggest that the Holocene had significant periods of dune reactivation. A paleoecological investigation was conducted in Jumbo Valley, NE, in an interdunal wetland known to contain sand layers interbedded with peat. The sedimentary record in two cores is continuous, except for some loss due to surficial burns. Macrofossils indicate that the late Pleistocene was cool and wet, with current vegetation establishing around 12,000 years ago. Sand and bulk density profiles reveal significant periods …

Review Of Caddo Verb Morphology By Lynette R. Melnar, David Rood

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

When I was a graduate student on the West Coast, we used to playa little game to make fun of East Coast formal linguistics by asking each other, "What would transformational grammar look like if Chomsky spoke X instead of English?" Obviously, if Caddo were X, the answer would not involve tree diagrams, phrase structures, or transformations. Things haven't changed very much. Faced with describing a language like Caddo, a linguist receives virtually no help from the massive literature on syntactic and morphological theory from the last forty or fifty years.

Availability Of Suitable Habitat For Northern River Otters In South Dakota, Alyssa M. Kiesow, Charles D. Dieter

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

Currently, the northern river otter (Lontra canadensis) is listed as a threatened species in South Dakota. We determined whether adequate habitat was available for reintroducing river otters in South Dakota. The 17 rivers/creeks included in the analysis were selected according to stream size, water gradient, and water permanence. A vegetation transect was conducted and a water sample was collected at each study site, ranging from one to four per river. Rivers/creeks were rated (1 = least suitable to 5 = most suitable) according to habitat requirements of river otters in the following categories: stream characteristics, watershed features, water …

Review Of Geology Of The Lewis & Clark Trail In North Dakota By John W. Hoganson And Edward C. Murphy, Richard Josephs

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

Stephen Ambrose would he proud! During this bicentennial commemoration of the most intrepid expedition in American history, a plethora of hooks on a broad range of topics dealing with the "Journey or Lewis and Clark" have made their appearance. Hoganson and Murphy have taken an intriguing look at one segment or the journey-the physical environment or North Dakota where the expedition spent more time (213 days) than in any other area that would become a state during its two-and-a-half-year-long journey from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean. As mandated by Thomas Jefferson, a major goal or the expedition was to …

Review Of Enduring Legacies: Native American Treaties And Contemporary Controversies Edited By Bruce E. Johansen, Taiawagi Helton

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

Even casual observers know of disputes between Natives and non-Natives over governmental authority or natural resources. In the nearly forty years since tribes gained direct access to federal courts, they have been pursuing their rights with increasing fervor. With rare exceptions, those rights are declined in a treaty. Indeed. treaties provide the foundation for the hulk or the relationship between Tribal Nations and the United States and remain a vibrant source of tribal, international, and federal law. Nevertheless only a small fraction of the general public understands the text of these documents. Interpreting treaty language requires an understanding of the …

Review Of Empty Pastures: Confined Animals And The Transformation Of The Rural Landscape By Terence J Centner, Laura L. Jackson

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

The shift from integrated crop and livestock farms to confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in the last thirty years requires better regulatory policies, better enforcement, greater incentives for farmers to prevent pollution, and modification of some “right to farm” legislation. This is the thesis of Empty Pastures: Confined Animals and the Transformation of the Rural Landscape by Terence Centner, a professor of agricultural law and economics at the University of Georgia.

Review Of Farm Communities At The Crossroads: Challenge And Resistance Edited By Harry P. Diaz, Joann Jaffe, And Robert Stirling, Kenneth Bessant

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

Farm Communities at the Crossroads is a collection of works by twenty-nine authors dealing with the "transformations in farming and farm communities." The metaphor of a "crossroads" is aptly invoked to draw attention to the complex overlay of social, economic, political, and knowledge processes affecting rural society. The two themes of "challenge" and "resistance" are central to the conceptual organization of the hook, which incorporates issues such as the changing nature of farm work, rural restructuring, community development, the farm crisis, technological change, and agricultural policy development. The volume contains twenty-six articles organized into seven sections, the first of which …

Review Of Faces Of The Great Plains: Prairie Wildlife Photographs And Field Notes By Bob Gress, Text By Paul A. Johnsgard, James H. Shaw

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

Bob Gress, director or the Great Plains Nature Center in Wichita, provides, an extraordinary set or photographs for this coffee-table book. The text is by Paul Johnsgard, emeritus professor or biology and the author or more than forty books. A color map on page xiv showing the distributions or grassland types follows the recent trend toward limiting the shortgrass prairies to regions south or the Nebraska-South Dakota state line. The opening sentence defies the common perception or the Great Plains as simply "flyover" country and sets the tone for the text: "Few geographic regions or North America offer a greater …

Review Of The Tos Hand Hook Of Texas Birds By Mark W. Lockwood And Brush Freeman, Kent Rylander

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

Several authoritative checklists of Texas birds have been published since the first one in 1912. As is typical of most checklists, all appeared in the conventional narrative format--a tradition for checklists that seems impossible to give up, even though range maps have long been used effectively in bird books. Now, with the publication of Lockwood and Freeman's Texas Ornithological Society volume, we have at last a Texas checklist that allows us the convenience of referring to shaded distribution maps.
Maybe narratives are more "scientific" than maps. But are they really? Listing the counties that border the range of a species …

Table Of Contents- Spring 2005

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY

Volume 25 / Number 2 / Spring 2005

CONTENTS

"VANISHING" INDIANS?: CULTURAL PERSISTENCE ON DISPLAY AT THE OMAHA WORLD'S FAIR OF 1898

ADVERSARIES AND ALLIES: RIVAL NATIONAL SUFFRAGE GROUPS AND THE 1882 NEBRASKA WOMAN SUFFRAGE CAMPAIGN

WITHER THE FRUITED PLAIN: THE LONG EXPEDITION AND THE DESCRIPTION OF THE "GREAT AMERICAN DESERT"

REVIEW ESSAY: DIFFERENT WAYS OF VIEWING A MONUMENT

BOOK REVIEWS

BOOK NOTES

NOTES AND NEWS

Review Of Wilderness Journey: The Life Of William Clark By William E. Foley & William Clark And The Shaping Of The West By Landon Y. Jones, Jay H. Buckley

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Following the Lewis and Clark expedition's return in 1806, almost a decade passed before the first official record of their journey was published by Nicholas Biddle and James Allen in 1814. Two hundred years later Gary E. Moulton's definitive thirteen-volume editing of the journals was completed. In the past two centuries dozens of books and thousands of articles have explored various aspects of the Corps of Discovery and its participants. Dozens of biographies have chronicled the lives of Meriwether Lewis, George Drouillard, York, and, especially, Sacagawea. Amazingly, William Clark has received little notice. One important exception was Jerome O. Steffen's …

Review Of Myths America Lives By By Richard T. Hughes, Kris Fresonke

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Scholars of American culture can resist anything except temptation, and the ultimate temptation is to write a jeremiad. Like New England divines, suckled in a creed outworn, calling for reform from pulpits tenured and unnoticed, the contemporary academic observer of American life, as a matter of professional privilege, redrafts his raw material into a social gospel. Its formal features are fundamentalism and selective evidence. Its mood is unironic. It has one ending: decline and fall.

Richard T. Hughes's Myths America Lives By suggests that the United States has both created and been created by six national, and in some cases …

Review Of Cherokee Women In Crisis: Trail Of Tears, Civil War, And Allotment, 1838-1907 By Carolyn Ross Johnston, Rowena Mcclinton

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Johnston begins her book by sharing family stories passed down by her Cherokee female relatives whose narratives probably emanated from another ancestor, Caledonia, a victim of Cherokee Forced Removal (1838-1839). To quench her desire to learn more, Johnston seeks to furnish additional information about the sustaining power of women during times of extreme upheavals: forced displacement from the American South (1838-1839); the Civil War and its aftermath (1861-1877); and allotment in severalty of Cherokee lands (1887-1907). Following two other path breaking studies of Cherokee women, Theda Perdue's Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835 (1998) and Sarah H. Hill's Weaving …

Review Of Ghost Towns Alive: Trips To New Mexico's Past By Linda G. Harris, David Pike

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Not even ghost towns are exempt from progress. In New Mexico, some ghost towns are disappearing into the earth or being subsumed by ranches, while others are reincarnating themselves into outright tourist attractions. Accordingly, books about them are morphing from travel guides that tell us what we'll see, to coffee tables that show us what we missed. Ghost Towns Alive by Linda Harris is one of the former, but its artistic photos and clever, sensitive writing nod to the latter.

Harris offers her definition of "ghost town" as a place founded for a purpose, later to decline. By adding "accessible …

"Vanishing" Indians? Cultural Persistence On Display At The Omaha World's Fair Of 1898, Josh Clough

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Nebraska's Indian population exploded in the summer of 1898, but it was not due to natural increase. More than 500 Indians representing twenty-three tribes came to Omaha as part of the United States Indian Bureau's exhibit at the Trans-Mississippi Exposition. During their three-month stay at the world's fair, Indians engaged in dancing, feasting, visiting, and earned money performing sham battles. In doing so they demonstrated not only the vibrancy and resilience of Native American cultures, but also the ineffectiveness of the government's assimilation policy. The Indian Bureau spent $40,000 for the Indian Congress (as this gathering of Native peoples came …

Adversaries And Allies Rival National Suffrage Groups And The 1882 Nebraska Woman Suffrage Campaign, Carmen Heider

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In September 1882, Nebraska was the setting for a significant moment in the history of the United States women's rights movement: the two rival suffrage organizations, the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) and the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), both held their annual conventions in Omaha, an event Sally Roesch Wagner describes as "an unprecedented move." Furthermore, the AWSA and NWSA "act[ed] in conjunction with the Nebraska Woman Suffrage Association" to schedule speakers during the 1882 campaign. Susan B. Anthony even participated in the AWSA thirteenth annual meeting held in Omaha in 1882. "I feel at home," she said, "on …

Wither The Fruited Plain: The Long Expedition And The Description Of The "Great American Desert", Kevin Z. Sweeney

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The view from Pikes Peak is breathtaking. Situated where the Great Plains meets the Rocky Mountains, one feels as if the whole nation is laid out before you. It is the perfect vantage point from which to write an inspirational anthem to the environmental magnificence of the United States. In the summer of 1893, Katherine Lee Bates, a Wellesley College English professor, sat on the summit of Pikes Peak, inspired by the panorama to pen the words to "America the Beautiful." Her poem was set to the tune "Materna" by Samuel Augustus Ward two years later to become one of …

Review Of Scattered Shadows: A Memoir Of Blindness And Vision By John Howard Griffin; Orbis, 2004, Sue Ann Gardner

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Faculty Publications

Scattered Shadows, by the author of the groundbreaking Black Like Me, is a memoir comprising essays written in the 1940s and 1950s covering Griffin's gradual descent into blindness after a war injury, and the sudden, spontaneous, inexplicable restoration of his vision ten years later. Here Griffin beautifully recounts his eventual acceptance, and even embracing, of his disability. For avid readers, who read many good things all the time, it is a revelation to come across a book that is as outstanding as this one. Page after page is filled with intelligence, insight, and occasional humor. The chapter titled …

College Student Views On Farming & Ranching Careers, Darrell R. Mark

Cornhusker Economics

Given the average age of the principal farm operator in Nebraska has increased from 48.5 years in 1982 to 53.9 years in 2002, it would appear that fewer young people have the opportunity or desire to pursue careers in production agriculture. Many agricultural producers and inhabitants of rural communities recognize this trend and often ponder whether it is lack of interest, lack of opportunity or both that cause youth to pursue other careers. Certainly, the highly competitive, capital intensive, lowmargin business that production agriculture has become could be expected to deter many college students from a career in farming or …

Ordering Chaos: An Integrated Guide And Online Archive Of Walt Whitman’S Poetry Manuscripts, Brett Barney, Mary Ellen Ducey, Andrew Jewell, Kenneth M. Price, Brian L. Pytlik Zillig, Katherine L. Walter

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Faculty Publications

In order to organize the widely dispersed manuscripts of Walt Whitman, The Walt Whitman Archive, in partnership with the University of Nebraska- Lincoln Libraries, has utilized the power of Encoded Archival Description (EAD) to create a single, scholarly enhanced guide to Whitman’s poetry manuscripts. This integrated finding guide to Whitman’s poetry manuscripts includes item-level description, links to repository guides that provide both location information and collection context, links to digital images of the manuscripts, and links to Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) transcriptions. In creating such a guide, we had to work cooperatively across disciplines and institutions, expand the use of …

Nebraska Farmland Values Continue On Upward Climb, Bruce B. Johnson, Aaron Raymond

Cornhusker Economics

Following a remarkable income year for most of Nebraska agriculture, it probably comes as no great surprise that agricultural land values rose sharply. Preliminary estimates for the year ending February 1, 2005 show the value of Nebraska farmland rising an average of 10.9 percent. This was the largest annual percentage increase of the past 16 years. The increase itself represents a value of more than $4.4 billion, and pushed the total estimated value of Nebraska’s agricultural real estate to nearly $45 billion.

A Community Conversation: Future Of Lincoln, University Of Nebraska Public Policy Center

University of Nebraska Public Policy Center: Publications

On Thursday, February 24th, 62 randomly selected residents of Lincoln/Lancaster County, Nebraska participated in a discussion about economic growth and quality of life in the City of Lincoln. The event was termed “A Community Conversation: Future of Lincoln.” The participants were surveyed both before and after the event to measure their opinions and knowledge of topics related to Lincoln’s economic growth and quality of life.

The effort – from the briefing materials sent to participants beforehand to the group discussions to the opportunity to present questions to a panel of experts – was modeled after the Deliberative Polling® format developed …

International Trade And The Cattle Industry, Dillon Feuz

Cornhusker Economics

Trade flows of cattle and beef had been increasing over the last 20 years, that is until BSE was discovered in Canada and subsequently in the U.S. in 2003. How did the increased trade of cattle and beef products impact the beef industry, the cattle industry and/or the cow-calf producer? The goal of this short article is to look at annual trade flows from 1998-2002 to provide answers to the above questions. The year 2002 was the last full year when trade flows were not significantly impacted by the discovery of BSE in North America.

Evaluating Sex Offenders Under Sexually Violent Predator Laws: How Might Mental Health Professionals Conceptualize The Notion Of Volitional Impairment?, Cynthia Calkins Mercado, Robert F. Schopp, Brian H. Bornstein

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

This paper examines the significance of the Supreme Court’s Hendricks and Crane decisions, with focus given to how mental health professionals may conceptualize the notion of volitional impairment. The Hendricks decision authorized postsentence civil commitment for sex offenders having a mental abnormality or personality disorder, rendering them likely to engage in future acts of sexual violence. In the Supreme Court’s majority opinion, Justice Thomas implied that the Kansas Act was legitimized by limiting the class of offenders eligible for this specialized form of commitment to those who are “unable to control” their dangerousness. In Crane, the Court ruled that …

March 2005 - Staff Meeting Minutes

ALEC Committee Minutes

No abstract provided.