Other International and Area Studies Commons^™

Review Of Kansas Charley: The Story Of A Nineteenth-Century Boy Murderer By Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Sarah Bohl

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In Kansas Charley: The Story of a Nineteenth Century Boy Murderer, Joan Jacobs Brumberg analyzes the issues involved in capital punishment of juvenile offenders through the case study of Charley Miller, a teenager who committed a double murder and was executed in Wyoming in 1892. Brumberg portrays Miller as the pitiable product of a consumerist society that drew harsh distinctions between haves and have-nots. The media, fascinated by violence resulting from the abuse of alcohol and weapons, helped shape public perceptions of how to punish youthful offenders. While Miller's case was far from typical, it still reflects problems with …

Review Of Gambling And Survival In Native North America By Paul Pasquaretta, James Fenelon

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Indian gaming throughout the United States has become a forum in which much of America reveals and works out its perspectives on American Indians, historical struggle, cultural survival, gambling, reciprocity, and the matter of choice. California is in the throes of an advertising war over more, or possibly less, gambling in the state, even as new casinos are going up in New York, Florida, and many other states. The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation runs Foxwoods in Connecticut, the Shakopee Mdewakanton (Dakota) Sioux Community runs Mystic Lake in Minnesota, and there are many other extremely successful Indian gaming enterprises, such as …

Review Of What's The Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won The Heart Of America By Thomas Frank, Donald Haider-Markel

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In his latest book, Thomas Frank takes a sweeping look at the current state of American politics by using the conservative revolution in Kansas as a microcosm of what conservative Republicans have done nationally. Frank directs our attention to the highly effective myths, language, and tactics developed by conservatives over the past forty years that have convinced many citizens apparently to vote against their own economic interests.

Frank's central thesis is that conservatives have remade the American political landscape and captured the hearts and minds of middle America by focusing their rhetoric and (mostly unattainable) policy goals on culture war …

Review Of Epic Wanderer: David Thompson And The Mapping Of The Canadian West By D'Arcy Jenish, Derek Hayes

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

David Thompson, often known as "the great mapmaker," spent twenty-five years traveling the entire West and Northwest of North America, covering 75,000 miles by canoe, horseback, and foot, and in the process produced the first comprehensive map of this vast region of about 1.2 million square miles. He then spent many years surveying the new 49th parallel boundary between the United States and Canada.

D'Arcy Jenish has produced, according to his publisher, the first full-length biography of Thompson-in that previous works have not given much consideration to his early and declining years-and has done a creditable job of following and …

Review Of Road Trip: Conversations With Writers By Shelly Clark And Marjorie Saiser, Jonathan Ritz

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In the opening of this collection of interviews, authors Shelly Clark and Marjorie Saiser layout a clear agenda for their project: to traverse their home state of Nebraska and meet with a number of noteworthy writers to talk about writing. This plan is revealed in an informal interview between the authors which nicely defines the occasion of the book and casts Clark and Saiser as not only interviewers but also subtle yet discernible characters, a pair of literary devotees on the road. The result is an inviting collection of conversations with a dozen Nebraska writers, including Jonis Agee, Hilda Raz, …

Review Of Window On The West: Chicago And The Art Of The New Frontier, 1890~1940 By Judith A. Barter, Sascha Scott

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This catalogue, published in conjunction with a 2003 exhibition at the Art Institute, aims to demonstrate that Chicago artists and patrons fostered a unique way of understanding and representing the great American West. Judith A. Barter, field-McCormick Curator of American Art at the Institute, offers insights into Chicago's artistic ties to America's "new frontier." This refreshingly multifaceted catalogue provides readers with a nuanced discussion of the exhibition's objects while contextualizing them in the social, political, and cultural environment of Chicago, and America at large, from 1890 to 1940.

Barter's narrative begins with Chicago's World Columbian Exposition (1893), which coincided with …

Review Of Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty In The Civil War Era By Nicole Etcheson, Gunja Sengupta

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Scholars have debated the meaning of "Bleeding Kansas" for generations. What impulses shaped the mid-1850s mayhem in Kansas Territory that came to be thought of as a "rehearsal" for the Civil War? Did the Kansas wars signify irreconcilable sectional differences over slavery? Or were the parties to the conflict driven chiefly by economic competition over claims, railroads, and towns? Neither, Nicole Etcheson argues, in her wide-ranging study of politics and personalities in Civil War era Kansas. Rather, "Bleeding Kansas" must be understood as a contest over the "political liberties of whites." While other historians of sectional conflict have dealt with …

Child Labor In The Early Sugar Beet Industry In The Great Plains, 1890-1920, Mary Lyons-Barrett

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Children working in agriculture have always been a part of the rural culture and work ethos of the United States, especially on the Great Plains. Many teenagers still detassel corn or walk the beans in the summer months to earn spending money or money for college. But what about the children who work as migrant laborers in commercialized agriculture? These children, even today, typically go untracked by governmental agencies. The children may lag behind in school because of their family's migrations and their frequent absences from school to work in the crops. Unlike the child who works during the summer …

Deep Mapping The Biome: The Biology Of Place In Don Gayton's The Wheatgrass Mechanism And John Janovy Jr.'S Dunwoody Pond, Susan Naramore Maher

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In his influential review, "Deep Maps in Ecoliterature," scholar Randall Roorda argues that the deep map deserves status as an "incipient genre of environmental literature," noting its "ambitious ... self-reflexive" nature and its innovative narrative architecture. The term "deep map" itself is the invention of writer William Least Heat-Moon, whose extended essay PrairyErth (a deep map) has given definition to this form. Deep-map writing is marked by its intertextual, interdisciplinary, and multivocal nature. It is also self-consciously cartographic, presenting maps, following maps, and redrawing maps. Deep mappers "both distrust maps and rely on them," or as Heat-Moon puts it, …

A Tribute To Sue Rosowski, Charles Braithwaite

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Susan J. Rosowski, Adele Hall Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln, died November 2, 2004. Sue has been an important voice in the Great Plains Quarterly since the beginning. In addition to publishing a half-dozen essays in the Quarterly, Sue reviewed manuscripts, wrote book reviews, and served as a guest editor on multiple occasions.

As one of the foremost scholars on Willa Cather, Sue served as General Editor of the Willa Cather Scholarly Edition, University of Nebraska Press, and was the founding editor of the Willa Cather Archive. Additional examples of her contribution …

Book Review: Western Rider: Views From A Car Window, David Taylor

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The history of the American West and its unique American-ness is intimately associated with our advances in mobility. Foot travel, wagon and ox, railroad, and, finally, automobile. Nothing has come to symbolize the vastness of the West more than a stretch of two-lane highway racing arrow-straight toward the distant horizon. Robert Frank codified that image in his book The Americans (1959), the first photographic meditation on, among other things, postwar car culture.

The Buffalo Commons: Great Plains Residents' Responses To A Radical Vision, Amanda Rees

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The American Great Plains has gained and shed various regional meanings since Euro-American exploration began. From a desert to a garden to a dust bowl to a breadbasket, this region's identity has shifted radically and dramatically over the last 200 years. In Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas, he argues that this Plains state can be understood as empty and bare: "The blank landscape prompted dreams of a blank-slate society, a place where institutes might be remade as humans saw fit." Authors such as Jonathan Raban have characterized the Great Plains as a whole in this manner. Raban …

Book Review: Indigenizing The Academy: Transforming Scholarship And Empowering Communities, William D. Demmert, Jr.

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Indigenizing the Academy is a thought-provoking collection of articles by Native American scholars regarding the intellectual and psychological environments they encountered as students, university faculty, researchers, and authors. It reviews whether their knowledge, their scholarship, their professional understandings, and their personal priorities were understood, accepted, ignored, or trivialized by faculty with whom, and institutions in which, they were associated. The authors also address issues of colonialism, ethnic fraud, research, university curricula, international partnerships, and sovereignty.

Book Review: On The River With Lewis And Clark, Carol Medlicott

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Verne Huser, a lifelong professional guide on western rivers, provides an interesting addition to the Lewis and Clark literature by aiming to reveal "how rivers figured in every aspect of the journey." His familiarity with running rivers in hand-powered craft well equips him to provide authoritative background for anyone wishing to interpret Lewis and Clark's journey as "essentially a river trip." Huser's strength is his ability to enliven the expedition journals' accounts of daily struggles with handling the various watercraft, with river conditions, and with the broader natural environments the expedition encountered in various river ecosystems. A substantial portion of …

"We Will Talk Of Nothing Else": Dakota Interpretations Of The Treaty Of 1837, Linda M. Clemmons

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

During treaty negotiations with federal Indian agents in 1851, Taoyateduta (Little Crow), a Dakota representative, warned that the council members would "talk of nothing else" until conflicts related to the previous Treaty of 1837 had been resolved. His statement is surprising, given that government officials at the time, as well as subsequent historians, have interpreted the Treaty of 1837 as an uncontroversial, even positive, event for both the Dakota and the federal government. However, Taoyateduta and the other Dakota did not view the Treaty of 1837 in the same way. Instead, Taoyateduta's words illustrate the continued Dakota disillusionment and anger …

Book Review: American Indian Thought: Philosophical Essays, Sandy Grande

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

As Anne Waters notes, her volume is the first published collection of essays on American Indian philosophy written by American Indians with PhDs in philosophy. As such, it is a landmark, a significant juncture in the continual evolution of Native intellectual life. While all contributors share a common academic interest in philosophy, they vary greatly in their disciplinary and tribal affiliations, providing a broad range of topics, approaches, and methodologies.

Book Review: The Plains Sioux And U.S. Colonialism From Lewis And Clark To Wounded Knee, Carole Barrett

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Colonialism becomes the lens through which Jeffrey Ostler both analyzes and interprets the history of the Plains Sioux. His account begins in 1803 when the United States claimed sovereignty over Sioux lands through the Louisiana Purchase and extends through the Wounded Knee Massacre (1890), which Ostler interprets as an anticolonial response to the reservation system. Expansion of geographic boundaries and economic interests led the United States to claim dominion over the tribes in the West, and this, in turn, led to conflict, conquest, and eventual control over the tribal nations. In examining this dynamic of contact and conquest, Ostler concentrates …

Patterns Of Habitat Use By Whooping Cranes During Migration: Summary From 1977-1999 Site Evaluation Data, Jane Austin, Amy Richert

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

We used site evaluation data collected during 1977–1999 to examine patterns of habitat use by whooping cranes (Grus Americana) during migration through the United States portion of the Wood Buffalo–Aransas flyway. We examined characteristics of 3 types of stopover habitats: 1) roost sites (n = 141 records), 2) feeding sites (n = 306), and 3) dual-use sites (i.e., where observer recorded cranes as using a site for both roosting and feeding (n = 248). Results in spring were influenced by the large number of records from Nebraska (> 67% of spring records) and in fall by frequent observations …

A Fresh Look At The Taxonomy Of Midcontinental Sandhill Cranes, Douglas Johnson, Jane Austin, Jill Shaffer

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

The midcontinental population of sandhill crane (Grus canadensis) includes about 500,000 birds and provides valuable recreational crane-watching and hunting opportunities in Canada and the United States. It comprises three subspecies, one of which (G. c. rowani) was of uncertain taxonomic status and another of which (G. c. tabida) merited protection from excessive harvest due to its small population size. We obtained measurements of cranes used by Johnson and Stewart (1973) and additional crane specimens to 1) evaluate the subspecies designation of midcontinental sandhill cranes and 2) to seek improved methods for classifying cranes from …

Inter-Species Variation In Yolk Steroid Levels And A Cowbird-Host Comparison, D. Caldwell Hahn, Jeff S. Hatfield, Mahmoud A. Abdelnabi, Julie M. Wu, Lawrence D. Igl, Mary A. Ottinger

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

We examined variability in yolk hormone levels among songbird species and the role of yolk steroids as a mechanism for enhanced exploitation of hosts by the parasitic brown-headed cowbird Molothrus ater. Within-clutch variation in yolk steroids has been found in several avian species in single species studies, but few comparisons have been made among species. We found a large range of differences in yolk testosterone among the seven passerine species examined, with significant differences between those at the high end (song sparrow Melospiza melodia, red-winged blackbird Agelaius phoeniceus, and house sparrow, Passer domesticus) and those at the …

Plains Harvest Mouse In North Dakota, Robert W. Seabloom, Terry L. Shaffer

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

The plains harvest mouse (Reithrodontomys montanus) is primarily a species of the central and southern plains of North America (Hall 1981, Wilkins 1986). Its published distribution extends from northwestern South Dakota south to the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Sonora, and Durango. To the west, it occurs in eastern Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, and southeastern Arizona, while its eastern limits are in eastern Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and southwestern Missouri. In South Dakota, R. montanus has been reported as far north as the vicinity of Ludlow, Harding County, which is the most northerly published location recorded for the species …

Variability In Vegetation Effects On Density And Nesting Success Of Grassland Birds, Maiken Winter, Douglas H. Johnson, Jill A. Shaffer

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

The structure of vegetation in grassland systems, unlike that in forest systems, varies dramatically among years on the same sites, and among regions with similar vegetation. The role of this variation in vegetation structure on bird density and nesting success of grassland birds is poorly understood, primarily because few studies have included sufficiently large temporal and spatial scales to capture the variation in vegetation structure, bird density, or nesting success. To date, no large-scale study on grassland birds has been conducted to investigate whether grassland bird density and nesting success respond similarly to changes in vegetation structure. However, reliable management …

A Retrospective Perspective: Evaluating Population Changes By Repeating Historic Bird Surveys, Lawrence D. Igl, Douglas H. Johnson

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

Acquiring an accurate picture of the changes in bird populations often involves a tradeoff between the time and effort required to complete the surveys and the number of years spent surveying the bird populations. An alternative approach to long-term monitoring efforts is to collect current data and contrast those with data collected earlier in a similar fashion on the same study site(s). To evaluate changes in bird populations, we repeated two extensive surveys, one in North Dakota (1967 vs. 1992-1993) and the other in the Platte River Valley of Nebraska (1979-1980 vs. 2001), where large areas of native vegetation had …

Causes Of Wolf Depredation Increase In Minnesota From 1979-1998, Elizabeth K. Harper, William J. Paul, L. David Mech

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

Wolf (Canis lupus) depredations on livestock in Minnesota have been increasing over the last 20 years. A major explanation cited for this increase is wolf range expansion, but no studies have tested this explanation. Additional reasons could include 1) wolf colonization of new areas within long-existing wolf range, 2) learning by wolves in established range, and 3) increased wolf density. We did not assess increasing wolf density as a factor because estimated wolf density in Minnesota has not increased. To assess how each of the other factors might have affected depredations, we created and analyzed a database of …

Europe, Victoria Lowdon, Angela Woolliams, Robin Davey

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Both individually and collectively, European countries have vast experience with international and domestic terrorism. Because the point of terrorist attacks is primarily within a particular country (United Kingdom, Turkey and Spain), terrorism has come to be viewed by these states as a domestic problem. At the same time European countries have recognized the value of inter-governmental cooperation, which has been codified in various bilateral and multilateral agreements and conventions dating back to the 1950’s.

We Welcome The New Immigrants, John Defrain, Rochelle L. Dalla, Douglas A. Abbott, Julie Johnson

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

From the very beginning of this project we have focused on taking a balanced approach to identifying the strengths and challenges of new immigrants in the Great Plains. Discussions of change in our world invariably focus on problems, and only occasionally on the strengths. We set out to look at new immigrants from a different perspective, in our view, a more realistic perspective: seeing the inherent strengths they possess as newcomers to our region and the gifts they bring, and examining the cultural assets the newcomers and the longer-term residents all can rely upon in working together to meet the …

A Charismatic Iranian American Engineer, Jane Meehan

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

This is the story of Iranian engineer Mostafa Jamshidi and his twenty-five years in Nebraska: his student days, his experiences with the immigration department and his eventual citizenship, his work history, and his personal life as told by his English teacher and surrogate mother, His language skills, soccer playing, and personality enabled him to combat his homesickness and the harassment of the immigration officials. The University of Nebraska at Omaha and the Nebraska Department of Roads gave him a place to learn and grow despite the time and geography in which he was born. The Great Plains, with its friendliness, …

A View Of Sudanese Refugee Resettlement Through Nebraska’S Print Media, Mary Willis, Constance Fernald

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

The print media has the potential to educate the general public about newly arriving Great Plains populations, influence refugee resettlement programs, and motivate volunteers to assist in transitions. Thus, accuracy of news items is crucial to successful assimilation of new populations to host communities. In this paper, we provide results from a content analysis of eight Nebraska newspapers regarding Sudanese refugees. We focus on refugee population descriptors, cultural characteristics, resettlement issues, and refugee goals to determine what could be learned about refugees from Sudan if one used local print media. Consistent with theories of stereotyping, results suggest that limited, and …

Strengths And Challenges In Chinese Immigrant Families, Xiaolin Xie, Yan Xia, Zhi Zhou

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

This qualitative study involved interviewing 40 Chinese Americans residing in Lincoln and Omaha, NE, and Naperville, IL, on their perceptions of family strengths and acculturative stress. Themes related to family strengths include family support leading to achieving a renewed sense of family, contextual support from friends and community, communication among family members, spiritual well-being, and balancing host and heritage cultures. Themes pertaining to acculturative stress are language barriers, loneliness, and loss of social status and identity at the early stage of immigration. New dimensions are being added to the current family strengths model. Implications for health professionals are provided.

An Analysis Of Refugee Resettlement Patterns In The Great Plains, John Gaber, Sharon Gaber, Jeff Vincent, Darcy Boellstorff

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

Great Plains communities have been experiencing an influx of refugees but many communities are unaware of the international and national context for refugee resettlement. This article explores patterns impacting US Great Plains communities. This leads to three specific questions: (1) How many refugees have been resettled since 1983 in the US, in comparison to the Great Plains region, and where are they? (2) What are the patterns of the refugees resettled in the US versus the Great Plains region? And, (3) What are some of the economic benefits that can be anticipated in the resettlement of refugees in the Great …