Other International and Area Studies Commons^™

Review Of "Banned In Kansas: Motion Picture Censorship, 1915-1966," By Gerald R. Butters Jr., Thomas Fox Averill

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

From 1915 to 1966, Kansas maintained an active film censorship board, empowered by BOOK REVIEWS 73 the legislature to review each film that might be shown in the state. The board could accept the film, remove scenes or titles (and, when pictures began to talk, objectionable language), or reject the film entirely-hence the title of Butters's book.

In 1920, the Kansas Board of Review first published its official standards. These included the positive: a film should be wholesome, and should not ridicule any religious sect or race of people. But the "shall nots" quickly asserted themselves: no debasing of morals, …

Review Of "This Land, This Nation: Conservation, Rural America, And The New Deal." By Sarah T. Phillips, Brian C. Cannon

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In this sophisticated reinterpretation, Sarah T. Phillips traces the history and impact of New Deal conservation policy. She argues persuasively that rural conservation programs deserve a prominent place in New Deal historiography because they significantly shaped the New Deal state and because they were integral to the New Deal's campaign for economic recovery. Her work is sufficiently broad and innovative to invite criticism at multiple points on evidentiary grounds, but the book is consistently engaging.

Phillips shows that during the 1920s, eastern land use planners and politicians, along with progressives in the USDA, advocated planned and coordinated use of natural …

Review Of "Cather Studies 7: Willa Cather As Cultural Icon," Edited By Guy Reynolds, Susan Kress

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Since its founding in 1990, Cather Studies has offered seven occasions for the publication of a volume devoted to Willa Cather scholarship. Of late, the series's editors have focused on a theme; in volume 7, editor Guy Reynolds, director of the Cather Project at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, offers an introduction and twenty essays by both established Cather scholars and relative newcomers relating directly or indirectly to the matter of Willa Cather as cultural icon. Several essayists provide

Several essayists provide provocative definitions of what it means to have reached the status of icon. For Elsa Nettels, "Writers become icons …

Review Of "Forty Acres And A Fool: How To Live In The Country And Still Keep Your Sanity." By Roger Welsch, Gwendolyn K. Meister

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

These recent books by longtime Nebraska author, folklorist, and humorist Roger Welsch examine life in the Great Plains from two quite different perspectives. Forty Acres and a Fool, ostensibly a how-to book on moving to the country, is written in a personal, conversational style from the start. In the introduction Welsch relates the story of his own physical (and mental) relocation to Dannebrog, a village of 352 in central Nebraska. Although the book offers practical advice on everything from moving buildings to fitting in with the social life of one's chosen rural community, it feels essentially like sitting down …

Jim, Antonia, And The Wolves Displacement In Cather's My Antonia, Robin Cohen

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In one of the most frequently noted incidents in Willa Cather's My Antonia, Russian immigrant Pavel reveals on his deathbed that, when driving his friend's wedding party sledge, he saved his own life and companion Peter's by throwing the bride and groom to the attacking wolves. Antonia and Jim are fascinated by this story, and readers are haunted and intrigued by it. The tale holds the obvious appeal (both for the children and Cather's reader) of the drama of the incident, the color of its remote foreign setting, and the morbid satisfaction of learning the mysterious past of the …

Notes And News- Winter 2009

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

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Title And Contents

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY

Volume 29 / Number 1 / Winter 2009

THE METHODISTS' GREAT 1869 CAMP MEETING AND ABORIGINAL CONSERVATION STRATEGIES IN THE NORTH SASKATCHEWAN RIVER VALLEY

"YOU HAVE TO BE INVOLVED ... TO PLAY A PART IN IT": ASSESSING KAINAI ATTITUDES ABOUT VOTING IN CANADIAN ELECTIONS

JIM, ANTONIA, AND THE WOLVES: DISPLACEMENT IN CATHER'S MY ANTONIA

REVIEW ESSAY: WHAT'S CHOCTAW HISTORY-AND WHO GETS TO SAY?

BOOK REVIEWS

NOTES AND NEWS

Review Of Willie Wells: "Ei Diablo" Of The Negro Leagues, By Bob Luke, Leslie Heaphy

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Bob Luke introduces readers to Willie Wells the man as well as Willie Wells the ball player. Wells's life is placed in the larger context of where he came from in Texas as well as what was happening in America during and after his baseball career ended. To tell his story Luke relies on primary sources as much as possible. Interviews and Wells's own letters are nicely woven throughout the text, giving readers an immediate feel for Wells as a person.

After presenting Wells the player and family man, Luke offers a discussion of the long road to the Hall …

Death, Murder, And Mayhem Stories Of Violence And Healing On The Plains, Susan Naramore Maher

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

12,000,000 years afo: On the grassy plains of what is now northeast Nebraska, the ordinary circumstances of life buckled under the sudden, steady fall of volcanic ash, abrasive and glassy, that was the harbinger of catastrophe. An eruption much farther west in Idaho had spewed ash up into the upper atmosphere where winds carried the particles eastward. Seventeen species of prehistoric animals would meet their death near a watering hole. The smallest animals succumbed first, their lungs quickly overcome by the cutting particles; the larger animals lived on up to five weeks before the ash killed them. When the event …

Review Of Beyond Red Power: American Indian Politics And Activism Since 1900. Edited By Daniel M. Cobb And Loretta Fowler, Donna Langston

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Despite the degree of American government domination, American Indian activists have managed to create a legacy of change. Beyond Red Power is a must-read for anyone wishing to explore the rich tradition of American Indian politics. The volume brings together historians, anthologists, and legal and media studies scholars. A number of pieces focus on northern and southern Great Plains tribes.

How has a small demographic group that lives in the midst of a dominant society with little commitment to treaty rights managed to ensure political survival and cultural revitalization? This text traces over fifty years of activist and tribal strategies …

Review Of Imagined Homes: Soviet German Immigrants In Two Cities By Hans Werner, Anke Ortlepp

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In his Imagined Homes, Hans Werner compares the acculturation experience of ethnic Germans from Poland and the Soviet Union who settled in two migration waves in what at first glance seem to be very different cities: Winnipeg, Canada, and Bielefeld, Germany. A closer look, however, reveals that the two cities had much in common. Both were medium-sized urban centers that had integrated newcomers before. The mentalities of their inhabitants were shaped as much by Cold War thinking as by a capitalistic outlook.

Still, Werner shows that although the migrants who came to Winnipeg in the 1950s and to Bielefeld …

Review Of Speak Like Singing: Classics Of Native American Literature. By Kenneth Lincoln, James Ruppert

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Kenneth Lincoln's most recent book follows his others in style and content. Here he is concerned with outlining the fusions of contemporary Native American literature and oral tradition. Starting with sections on song, poetry, and lyric, he suggests that he will steer a course between the extremes of imperialism and essentialism. Some readers will appreciate his imaginative, suggestive, free-flowing discussion of oral and literary impulses from Beowulf to the poetry of Sherwin Bitsui. The central chapters focus on what he calls "crossing texts" by some of the best-known Native writers, and the idea of fusion is his guiding principle. Yet …

Review Of A Call To Action: An Introduction To Education, Philosophy, And Native North America By Curry Stephenson Malott, Malia Villegas

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In A Call to Action, Curry Stephenson Malott appeals to North American educators to acknowledge their essential role in the ongoing struggle for sustainable and ethical ways of living as humans. Malott joins a rising chorus of scholars who warn about a singular focus on the conflict between Indigenous and Western epistemologies (e.g., Glen Aikenhead's "Integrating Western and Aboriginal Sciences: Cross-Cultural Science Teaching" in Research in Science Education, 2001; Ray Barnhardt and A. O. Kawagley's "Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Alaska Native Ways of Knowing" in Anthropology and Education Quarterly 2005; and Ladislaus Semali and J. L.Kincheloe's editors' …

Review Of Twentieth-Century Texas: A Social And Cultural History. Edited By John W. Storey And Mary L. Kelley, Tom Wagy

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

"Given such a large body of scholarship," editors John W. Storey and Mary L. Kelley admit, "another study of Texas seems hardly necessary." Nevertheless, they contend, Twentieth Century Texas: A Social and Cultural History (a collection of fifteen essays) fills a weakness in the Lone Star State's history bibliography, arguing that social and cultural subjects have received "short shrift" in survey texts. Moreover, Storey and Kelly justify their volume because "it focuses solely on the past century, bringing the story up-to-date."

All students of Texas's past will enjoy this collection. Summary histories of Mexican Texans, blacks, women, literature, education, and …

Review Of The Long Journey Of A Forgotten People: Metis Identities And Family Histories Edited By Ute Lischke And David T. Mcnab; The Western Metis: Profile Of A People Edited By Patrick C. Douaud, Mike Evans

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The recent publication of Long Journey and Western Metis is indicative of the burgeoning interest in Metis studies; there are a remarkable number of scholars, new and old, now publishing in the area. It seems likely that this burst of activity is related to the recent Supreme Court of Canada decision in R. v. Powley, 2003, S.c.c. 43 (http://www.canliLorg/en/ca/scc/ doc/2003/2003scc43/2003scc43.html) dealing with the complex issues of Metis identity and rights.

Though the impetus for the publications might be linked to a common legal event, the publications themselves are very different: The Western Metis is a collection well rooted in an …

Review Of The Nebraska-Kansas Act Of 1854. Edited By John R. Wunder And Joann M. Ross, Gary L. Cheatham

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

One of the most important actions affecting the settlement of the Plains was the passage of the Nebraska-Kansas Act, which created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. In examining the passage of the bill and its aftermath, The Nebraska-Kansas Act of 1854 brings into clear focus many of the events related to this legislation. Although the law was officially called "An Act to Organize the territories of Nebraska and Kansas," it was often referred to as "the Nebraska bill."

Collectively, the eight essays in this slender volume look at the national debate over the passage of the Nebraska-Kansas Act, the …

Review Of Voices From Haskell: Indian Students Between Two Worlds, 1884-1928 By Myriam Vuckovic, Michael C. Coleman

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

"I did not send Her there to be an Irish washerwoman," wrote the angry Indian father of a student forced to work in the Haskell school laundry in 1888. Such expressive words-especially striking to an Irish reviewer-characterize this major study of the Indian boarding school at Lawrence, Kansas. Founded in 1884, it is the only such institution to evolve into a four-year university, Haskell Indian Nations University. Myriam Vuckovic draws wonderfully well on Indian evidence: letters and other texts by students, reminiscences by ex-students, and contemporaneous correspondence by kin. Opinions of educators are not ignored either. The result is an …

Review Of The Importance Of Being Monogamous: Marriage And Nation Building In Western Canada To 1915 By Sarah Carter, Jean Friesen

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Sarah Carter's The Importance of Being Monogamous is a timely study of Canada's efforts at the turn of the twentieth century to impose monogamy on its western frontier in communities long used to fur trade marriage by the custom of the country. Today the status of plural marriages is a contentious issue facing some jurisdictions in North America, including British Columbia. Some European societies have also struggled with the legal issues stemming from migration from regions where polygamy is firmly grounded in both faith and law. Carter's new book offers a rich, well-documented historical context for those involved in such …

Review Of Bertram Goodhue: His Life And Residential Architecture. By Romy Wyllie, Benet Haller

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Romy Wyllie's Bertram Goodhue is a richlyillustrated and well-researched exploration of Goodhue's architectural work. Using a large number of historic and current photos, floor plans, and architectural renderings, Wyllie covers much of the same ground as Richard Oliver in his 1983 Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, but with a greater emphasis on his residential work. Oliver's book covers nearly all of Goodhue's nonresidential projects and five completed and five proposed residences. Wyllie describes twenty of Goodhue's completed residential projects and six of his unbuilt home designs in great detail. She discusses some of his significant nonresidential projects, particularly as they affected …

Review Of The Line From Here To There: A Storyteller's Scottish West Texas By Rosanna Taylor Herndon, Allan O. Kownslar

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Memoirs are very popular these days, and this is a good one. Rosanna Taylor Herndon, a retired communications professor from Hardin-Simmons University and a professional storyteller, combines her storytelling with a collection of eighteen anecdotes about her Scottish family members in West Texas primarily during the Great Depression. She reveals the poverty people endured and the compassion they exhibited toward one another and others in similar situations. Each story comprises a unique setting, character development, and action regarding life during that time in the southern Great Plains.

Among the examples Herndon offers is "The Panhandle Is Coming," which recounts the …

Review Of Exiles And Pioneers: Eastern Indians In The Transmississippi West. By John P. Bowes, Tracy Neal Leavelle

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In Exiles and Pioneers, John Bowes examines the dynamic histories of the nineteenth-century Shawnees, Delawares, Potawatomis, and Wyandots as they struggled to find a stable place in an aggressively expanding nation. Bowes acknowledges their status as exiles forced from cherished homelands during the era of Indian removal, but he also argues that members of these Native communities acted as pioneers in the Trans-Mississippi West. Already in motion before passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830, they traveled west-sometimes voluntarily, often by force-where they built and rebuift their communities in Missouri, Kansas, and Indian Territory. Bowes contends that "the …

Review Of How Cities Won The West: Four Centuries Of Urban Change In Western North America. By Carl Abbott, Timothy Mahoney

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This impressive survey of western urban history demonstrates How Cities Won the West. Its original conceptualization and persuasive argument are supported by an impressive amount of evidence. It should be considered as the "last stand" among urban historians who still feel the need to argue for the central role of urbanization in the development of the West.

Carl Abbott demonstrates that in the nineteenth century several kinds of towns and cities-raw outposts, gateways, industrial towns, irrigation towns (seeking to be the center of an "Inland Empire"), and tourist centers-competed for central roles that they believed would tip the balance of …

Review Of Divining Margaret Laurence: A Study Of Her Complete Writings By Nora Foster Stovel, Lyall H. Powers

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Neil Besner is right to judge Nora Foster Stovel's Divining highly: it "ranges across all of Laurence's work ... intelligently and accessibly," as he says on the jacket. Before I augment his praise I must note a couple of blemishes, if Stovel will accept the soft impeachment of an admirer. Malcolm Ross did not teach the future Margaret Laurence or anyone else at United College (now the University of Winnipeg): I was a student with Peggy Wemyss in Ross's stunning "Seventeenth-Century Thought" on the Fort Garry campus of the University of Manitoba (and in spite of the uncorrected typo of …

Review Of The Death Of Raymond Yellow Thunder And Other True Stories From The Nebraska-Pine Ridge Border Towns By Stew Magnuson, Akim D. Reinhardt

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Journalists of late have often been at the vanguard of recent history, using their particular research methodology, which is more comfortable with the elusive nature of the near past, to beat historians to the punch. This has been particularly true of American Indian history .. Part-time journalist Peter Matthiessen was among the first to tackle the history of tumult on Pine Ridge Reservation during the 1970s, including the Dick Wilson presidency, the siege of Wounded Knee, and the Leonard Peltier trials. Journalist-turned-literary-scholar Robert Allen Warrior and journalist Paul Chaat Smith were quick to examine the Red Power era more broadly, …

Review Of Keepers Of The Record: The History Of The Hudson's Bay Company Archives. By Deidre Simmons, Scott Stephen

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Given the remarkable character of the Hudson's Bay Company Archives, it is a little hard to believe that this is the first comprehensive study of their history. It was worth the wait, though, as Simmons deftly weaves more than three centuries of people and paper into a narrative as captivating as the records themselves. As Simmons observes in her introduction, this book is much more than just the history of the HBCA as an institution: it is both a history of the HBC's record-keeping (and record-keepers) from its earliest days and a case study in British and Canadian archival history. …

Review Of Mayor Helen Boosalis: My Mother's Life In Politics. By Beth Boosalis Davis, Jan P. Vermeer

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The title of Beth Davis's final chapter in this biography of her mother encapsulates the book's main message: "Life After Is Politics" for Helen Boosalis, a former mayor of Lincoln, Nebraska. Boosalis's life story is ostensibly the story of her political life. Davis, a past local government official herself, strives to describe not just the mayor's personal side or her political work but to demonstrate the intertwining of the two.

Underpinning the story is extensive research into newspaper files from the period, buttressed by scrapbooks, clippings, and memorabilia that her family, chiefly her father, collected over the years. Interviews with …

Review Of "North American Indians In The Great War." By Susan Applegate Krouse, Thomas A. Britten

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Anthropologist Susan Applegate Krouse employs the records of Joseph Kossuth Dixon to shed light on the experiences of American Indian servicemen during the First World War. A former Baptist preacher, Dixon waged a twodecade- long campaign before and after WWI to preserve a record of Indian cultures and traditions before Native Americans "vanished" as distinctive peoples. To this end, Dixon traveled extensively to photograph and film reservation Indians, at times choreographing or staging scenes that fit his somewhat romanticized view of indigenous life. On the eve of the U.S. entry into WWI, he argued for the creation of segregated Indian …

Review Of "The Cypress Hills: An Island By Itself." By Walter Hildebrandt And Brian Hubner, George Colpitts

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The Cypress Hills, rising as outliers in the northern portion of the Missouri Coteau and dominating the mixed xeric grasslands of southwestern Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta, have a vast human story of their own. They are certainly worthy of their own history book. This new edition of Hildebrandt and Hubner's 1994 book has been "rewritten and reshaped" to retell the story of the prehistory, aboriginal, early trade, and mounted police history of the region. Originally serving as historians and guides of the Fort Walsh National Historic Site, the authors were well placed to provide it. The Cypress Hills presents a …

Review Of "Destroying Dogma: Vine Deloria Jr. And His Influence On American Society." Edited By Steve Pavlik And Daniel R. Wildcat, Tink Tinker

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Here is a fine collection of eights essays on American Indian topics by friends and former students of Vine Deloria Jr. (Dakota/Lakota), the towering figure of our era among American Indian scholars and writers. While some contributions are more about Deloria's work than others, the whole collection is intended to demonstrate his influence on the thinking of scholars writing in American Indian studies today instead of merely placarding his prominence. Rather than simply praising Deloria, the volume continues his work. Anyone interested in the state of discourse in American Indian studies would benefit greatly from reading its contents. Most of …

Review Of Pat Green's Dance Halls & Dreamers , By Luke Gilliam, Cory Lock

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In Texas, music and dancing are inseparable. Whether country, blues, Tejano, or zydeco, most Texas music is crafted specifically for active audience participation. Dance halls have been the cornerstones of many Texas communities; thus it is not surprising that two recent books, Pat Green's Dance Halls & Dreamers and Texas Dance Halls: A Two-Step Circuit, examine these cultural institutions. Both works investigate how personal and community histories unfold across the dance floor and celebrate the individual owners, musicians, and patrons who distinctly mark each hall.

As the title suggests, country musician Pat Green conceptualized Pat Green's Dance Halls & Dreamers, …