James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities

Enticing the Iron Horse: The Unexpected Effects of Railroads on Town-Building in the Great Plains

Robert Voss — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 12:09:26 PDT

Town building in the Great Plains during the 19th century centered on railroads. Railroads were promoted as the means for fiscal success through direct and ancillary sources. When railroads did not transpire in the manners expected, towns sometimes resorted to drastic measures to lure railroads. These drastic measures could, and did, backfire as in the case of Brownville, Nebraska.

Located in southeastern Nebraska, Brownville offers an interesting study in the manner railroads affected town development. Planning, attempting and ultimately failing to entice railroads proved devastating to the town. The actions taken to get an effective railroad eventually led to lawsuits, increased property taxes, loss of the county seat and subsequent population decline.

Railroads offered progress and purpose for many towns in the Great Plains during the nineteenth century, but definitely not all. Towns in the Great Plains suffered when blinded by their dreams of greatness, they fell prey to designs of being the next metropolis, losing what little they had. Enticing the Iron Horse proved counter productive to town building efforts when they failed. Railroads thus affected town development, not just where railroads intersected towns, but where towns could not lure the iron horse.

Duncan Hines’ Consumption Community and the Geography of American Gastronomy, 1936-1956

Damon Talbott — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 12:06:53 PDT

Food historian Harvey Levenstein has argued that in the early 20th century “the sorry state of American gastronomy was best typified by Duncan Hines,” then the first restaurant critic of national stature. While Hines’ bestselling guidebook of the 1930s–1950s, Adventures in Good Eating, was not adventurous by contemporary culinary standards, it nevertheless encouraged a self-identified community to articulate its tastes, as subsequent listings were compiled and revised mostly by Hines’ readers. This “freemasonry of motorists” constructed a gastronomic geography of America in an era when cars, roads, and the spatial reorganization of work and leisure developed roadside dining into a foodway of tremendous cultural and economic power.

Yet, if a community authored these guidebooks, were Americans ever without direction in uncharted spaces or were they actively creating places? I argue that the figure of and activity surrounding Hines stem from the material and social shifts caused by the conjuncture of automobility and consumerism. Although three decades later these same historical trends aided the dissolution of Hines’ community, knowledge produced by this nexus of popular culture contributed to modern practices and discourses of culinary regionalism, fast food, and gourmet “tastemaking.” The relationship between this critic, his community, and the larger context of consumption are thus integral to understanding, rather than dismissing, the spatial and aesthetic history of American taste.

Stoking a White Backlash: Race, Violence, and Yellow Journalism in Omaha, 1919

Nicolas Swiercek — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 12:04:54 PDT

The “Red Summer of 1919” marked the nadir of interracial violence that characterized urban America during the post-World War I era. Of the more than twenty-five cities that experienced so-called “race riots” that year, Omaha, Nebraska on 28 September 1919 witnessed a vigilante mob of white youth and adults numbering in the thousands destroy the county courthouse, attempt to lynch Omaha’s mayor, and brutally execute an African American man named William Brown. The violence in Omaha and places as disparate as Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Longview, Texas occurred in communities coping with dramatic internal migrations, urban spatial tension, job competition, wartime xenophobia, and popularized fears of interracial sex.

This paper suggests that those factors, although significant, were not the primary impetuses for the white uprising in Omaha. This paper argues that throughout 1919 Omaha’s newspapers meticulously sensationalized alleged sexual assaults by African American men in and outside of Omaha. Yet also intertwined were Omaha’s machine politics and a recently-ousted political boss vying to discredit a newly elected progressive mayor through the pages of the Omaha Daily Bee. Utilizing newspaper articles, diaries, and interview transcripts, this paper examines how Omaha newspapers sensationalized mob violence and alleged sexual assaults committed by African Americans in order to weaken Omaha’s mayor. This paper finds that the newspapers had a profound impact on exacerbating white perceptions about Omaha’s African American community.

Americanization versus Open Society: Answering the Challenge of Multicultural Education

Svetlana Rasmussen — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 12:03:41 PDT

American education theory in the twentieth century is characterized by a split between proponents of assimilation, Americanization, and conformity, on the one hand, and proponents of diversity, cultural pluralism, and open society, on the other. The Progressive movement of the turn of the twentieth century espoused an American cosmopolitanism built on the basis of Anglo-American culture, yet ironically its simultaneous support for the equality of the cultures of immigrants made possible the further development of pluralist ideas. Horace M. Kallen in the 1920s introduced the idea of preservation of differences, a pluralism of cultures as opposed to cosmopolitanism, that presumed equality and assimilation. Kallen’s cultural pluralism recognized the inherent value of differences, and the need to preserve them. This division between the “Americanizing” Progressive educators and the adherents of cultural pluralism has shaped the ensuing debates between right-wing and left wing educational and political theorists. Conservative intellectuals, seeking to safeguard Anglo-American cultural traditions, have adhered to the views of the Progressives, suggesting that assimilation to the dominant culture is the most significant factor of success for American ethnic minorities. Intellectuals on the left have rejected the need for imposing a common assimilationist culture, and have embraced ideas of cultural pluralism. This paper considers the positions of Nathan Glazer and Richard Pratte (among others) as they relate to cultural pluralism, individualism, theories of the “melting-pot,”and multicultural and multi-ethnic education.

Newsworthy: Implications of Gender and Class in the January 12, 1888, Blizzard

Heather Stauffer — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 12:01:31 PDT

In January of 1888, the residents of Nebraska, Dakota Territory, Montana, Kansas, Wyoming, and even Iowa, Minnesota, and Texas were faced with a snowstorm unlike any they had seen before. Striking the majority of the region at the time school was dismissed, many students and teachers were caught long distances from home as the temperature dropped well below zero and visibility diminished. Striking the majority of the region at the time school was dismissed, it has become known as The Schoolchildren’s Blizzard. The disaster was forever ingrained in the minds of those who lived through it. By exploring different perspectives, a transformation of this storm and memory surfaces, fueled in large part by the attention newspapers put on school teachers at the time.

As a prominent institution on the Plains beginning in the middle-to-late 1800s, rural schools stood as a visualization of settlers’ commitment to education. Frequently consisting of one room, ideas of these buildings standing alone on the prairie give this educational tradition a romanticized image. The school systems, teachers, and students show a more complex and organized system, however, from which analyses of gender and class can be attained to show how they were perceived in local newspapers when their role of authority was put to the test during the January 12, 1888 blizzard.

Nurses, Patients, Physicians, and Science: Changing Nursing Ideals in the United States, 1924-1955

Lisa Schuelke — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 12:00:07 PDT

White nurses employed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) between 1924 and 1955 were particularly attracted to scientific methods of nursing practice and medical research. The rising emphasis on science in early twentieth-century America shaped the ways that nurses carried out procedures and responded to demanding jobs. Science, however, also represented excitement, a journey into a new world, and an opportunity to challenge old ideas about nurses’ place on the medical ladder. As new women, they were less likely to accept male physicians’ notions of superiority, and they demonstrated this by pushing the boundaries between nursing practice and physicians’ practice. Primary documents left by new nurses indicate that these women recognized such activities were essential to the wellbeing of their Native American patients on reservations from Montana to Arizona. Science, then, functioned as a major force in new nurses’ lives as they shaped its concepts to mold an even newer image of womanhood and recast “nursehood.”

Pine Ridge Reservation Fairs: Building Intercultural Communities through Play

Elisabeth Saunders — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:56:28 PDT

The consolidation of Native American groups onto reservations often resulted in the formation of new communities that developed a collective identity from the shared experience of forced assimilation and occupation. Rarely do historians associate the reservation border towns as extensions of this community. The racial, social, and cultural differences between reservation and white populations are often perceived to be too divergent to have fostered a regional community. Indeed, for most intercultural interactions this assumption holds true. Thus the reservation fairs held in the early twentieth century offer a unique instance in which rural populations on and off the reservation came together as a regional community to celebrate common interest such as equestrian sports, dancing, and agricultural production. This paper will examine the development of the Annual Pine Ridge Reservation Fair and the ways in which it fostered a multicultural community during a time period known for intolerance and racism.

Many studies on multicultural interactions have used Richard White’s concept of the “middle ground” to explain the negotiations and hybrid societies that developed as a result of cooperative interactions. This study also utilizes the concept to illustrate how “playing” at the fairs was itself a “middle ground” because it necessitated agreeing upon rules and maintaining mutual trust. This study treads a new path by expanding the lens of what can be considered a “middle ground,” and also the time periods in which such interactions occurred.

The Historical Community and the Digital Future

Brent M. Rogers — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:53:53 PDT

The historical community is undergoing change. Computers, digital tools, the Web, and online resource repositories have created a revolution in teaching, research, scholarship, outreach, and thought. How the digital age impacts history remains a looming concern. This paper will explore the digital age and the serious myriad questions facing the historical community now and in the future. With unfettered access to countless historical resources via online archives and databases, the Web provides an exceptional space for historians to research, discover teaching aides, and develop new thought. Fluid in content and form, the dynamic digital media changes the way we teach, research, and interpret history. Although skepticism currently exists within the historical profession, digital historical scholarship has a unique ability to connect with broader, more diverse audiences. Even with the great and rapid access to digitized documents students and professionals now enjoy, investment in the future to maintain the historical record and provide access to future history remains crucial. Preserving born-digital records represents a tremendous concern as archives and archivists do not have practical methods to maintain those records, raising the probability of losing contemporary documents. Indeed, digital information and the creation of electronic records are rapidly revolutionizing archival work and storing digital information, but there is more at stake for professionals in the humanities and particularly historians. Preserving born-digital records will determine future research and what topics historians can investigate. Important evidentiary pieces, like e-mail and memoranda, created digitally may not survive. There remains a continuing uncertainty about the future of digital information and history, one that if not considered will have a detrimental impact on future teaching, research, scholarship, knowledge, and memory.

Indians, “Esquimaux,” and Race: Identity and Community in the Lands West of Hudson’s Bay in the Eighteenth Century

Strother Roberts — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:52:13 PDT

This paper proposes that a cross-tribal sense of belonging, similar to modern conceptions of racism, facilitated the formation of multi-ethnic communities among the Indian populations living to the west of Hudson’s Bay in the eighteenth century.

Based upon observations made over the course of a century by employees of the Hudson’s Bay Company regarding the attitudes held by their Native American trading partners towards the region’s Inuit populations, this paper concludes that Indians living to the west of Hudson’s Bay in the eighteenth century constructed an inclusive trans-Indian sense of identity based, at least in part, on the exclusion of the Inuit “other.” Indian prejudice against the Inuit stretched across the boundaries of dialect and language-family and, within the scope of this manuscript, included Chipewyan, Cree, and Yellowknife Indians. Individual Indian communities An inclusive, trans-Indian identity was perpetually reinforced through trade, cohabitation and marriage, and joint raiding activities by the “in groups,” activities from which the Inuit were excluded. This exclusion was both result and cause of the continual hostility present between Indian and Inuit groups throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

Protestant England Revisited: A Study on English National Consciousness between 1540 and 1559

Ramazan Hakki Oztan — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:50:56 PDT

This paper will primarily call into question the components of the ‘commanding’ vernacular religious culture in Reformation England between the years 1540 and 1559 and relate them to the strengthening of English ‘national consciousness’. The analysis will take into consideration early Anglican sermons as examples of this vernacular religious culture. The preachers whose sermons will be put into question in this analysis are Hugh Latimer and Thomas Lever whose motives to preach in the way they did will also be elucidated by other important documents. As for the starting assumptions of the concepts of ‘nation,’ ‘nationalism,’ and ‘national sentiment or consciousness,’ Anthony Smith, the influential theorist of nationalism studies, will be our beacon, especially having considered his emphasis on the pre-existing cultures which supposedly contributed to the formation of modern nationalism(s). Keeping in mind the directions of Smith, we will also be taking a look at the common myths or other ties which unified the English nation and bolstered up the emergence of English national consciousness. Throughout the analyses, the particular focus will be put on the role and efficiency of the state apparatus which used this vernacular religious culture as a tool of disseminating a discourse aimed at constituting national unity and consciousness.

Community of Coercion and Compliance: Scientific Agriculture at Lake Andes, South Dakota, in the 1920s

David Nesheim — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:47:52 PDT

Riding the crest of a wave that peaked in the 1920s, governmental officials in and around Lake Andes, South Dakota, sought to reorder its cultural and physical landscape. Lake Andes, like so many other communities on the Great Plains, straddled two realities, as it fell within the boundaries of the Yankton Sioux Reservation and, after 1905, was home to a privately developed town. Despite following a relatively uniform impulse, officials from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the South Dakota Department of Agriculture, in conjunction with commercial and educational interests, implemented distinct programs.

Using reports from the BIA farm agent at Lake Andes and newspaper articles chronicling efforts to implement scientific agricultural technologies, this paper argues that the shared vision of scientific agriculture resulted in a narrow conception of permissible behaviors. For Yanktons, these goals required a reordering of both their social and cultural practices and the nonhuman biotic landscape. For white farmers, the transformation demanded adherence to a program of scientifically selected crops and elimination of competitors in the form of chinch bugs and native grasses. Some individuals chose to follows these dictates, while others resisted the plan. Agricultural communities do not arise from simple interactions among soil, water, flora and fauna, but result from a complex exchange among human cultures and nonhuman organisms.

War and Memory: The Creation of the American Memory of the Atomic Bombings and the End of the War in the Pacific

Michael Mishler — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:38:08 PDT

Much has been written about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, however, an element often overlooked in the history of these events is the way in which an official narrative of them was created in the minds of the American public. This paper examines how this official narrative and consequently memory of the bombings was formed. To do this newspaper articles were analyzed from the first published reports of the bombings in the American press up to recent stories regarding the bombings. Through the analysis of these reports it becomes clear that American memory of the bombings have three elements attached to it. The first being that Japan would not surrender, secondly the bombs saved lives, and finally Japan had started the war with the attack on Pearl Harbor. What makes these elements interesting is that each in some form or another was reported in the newspapers analyzed in this essay. The ultimate conclusion of the essay is that through various press releases and speeches Henry Stimson and Harry Truman were able to effectively shape the way in which Americans remember the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This then adds to the historical understanding not only of the events themselves, but also to how and why people remember.

“Hired Hands from Abroad”: The Populist Producer’s Ethic, Immigrant Workers, and Nativism in Montana’s 1894 State Capital Election

Brian Leech — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:35:12 PDT

Although many scholars study state history and most states have long-running history magazines, few write explicitly about state identity. This is surprising, given that many people identify with their state as often as they identify with their region or nation. This presentation will encourage research into this area with an investigation of how Montanans used the 1894 election for the state capital to describe who and what they felt best represented their state. Based on research into newspapers and political propaganda for both towns competing in the election for the state capital, this presentation investigates Montanans’ ideas about immigration, labor, and good citizenship in the late nineteenth century. It argues that the state’s Populist movement and immigration debates (particularly surrounding the Irish and Chinese populations) should figure as prominently in descriptions of late-nineteenth century Montana as the battles between industrial titans that often dominate historians’ narratives. Indeed, this election provided Montanans with a forum through which to both express their concerns about the “native”ness of the state’s new mine-working residents and debate the value of Populist and labor union ideas, particularly the value of manual labor. Concerns about what made both a good individual citizen (and his/her relationship to unionism) and a good corporate citizen (particularly in relation to the powerful Anaconda Mining Company and the Northern Pacific Railroad) shaped election rhetoric. By revealing a formative moment in the development of Montana’s political culture, a culture that still retains many elements of its Populist heritage, this presentation suggests how people “imagine communities” at the level of the state.

Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Africana Womanist Vision of Environmental Justice

Julie Iromuanya — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:30:06 PDT

My paper examines the feminist poetics of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s methodology of protest. Utilizing a gendered pathos, Saro-Wiwa evoked the female body as a metaphor, signaling a connection between the colonization of the land, indigenous peoples, and women in his speech. In the organization of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), he also utilized traditional West African systems that valued a complementary Africana womanist vision of community. In addition, the demonstration he is most remembered for is distinctly patterned after traditional West African female methods of protest. During the 1990’s, already as an established writer, Saro-Wiwa honed his gift with script to create a powerful, resonating call to action for Ogoni residents who were victims of a new form of imperialism in the name of oil in the Niger Delta region. His methods inspired worldwide human rights and environmental activism.

Revisiting Elwyn B. Robinson’s History of North Dakota: How the State’s History Created a Community

Jennifer Heth — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:27:35 PDT

In his History of North Dakota, Elwyn B. Robinson described six themes of North Dakota’s history: remoteness, dependence, radicalism, a position of economic disadvantage, the Too-Much Mistake, and adjustment. Robinson also concluded that these six themes of the state’s history influenced the state’s people and produced the North Dakota character, which included such traits as pride, stubbornness, and radicalism. Robinson’s scholarship did much to illuminate the complexities and interconnectedness of the state’s history, geography, and society, and his History of North Dakota is considered to be the cornerstone of North Dakota historical discourse. But given changes in approaches and interpretation in years since the original 1966 publication, are Robinson’s conclusions still applicable? How did the events and experiences of North Dakotans create a unique sense of community?

This paper will answer these questions by exploring how Robinson’s ideas continue to provide valuable insight into the North Dakota character. In addition, this paper will analyze how the events, issues, and factors within North Dakota’s history created a community of individuals who seek to prosper economically, socially, and politically in a challenging environment.

The UNL Botanical Seminar: Establishing a Scientific Community at the Turn of the Century

Susannah Hall — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:24:54 PDT

This is an online work cataloguing the history of the UNL Science Departments. It has several pages focusing on digital collections, as well as some written analysis. To date the collection includes the Chemistry Department and Life Sciences Departments, although data for additional departments are currently being assembled from the Love Library Archives & Special Collections. Special emphasis is placed on lists of faculty and detailed timelines for each department. Additionally, the groups and clubs associated with each department, including the Chemistry Club and Botanical Seminar, are of particular interest as scientific communities which shaped the departments, university, and field. Additionally, collections of Christmas newsletters sent by various departments define the focus and values of the departments and university, and indicate the direction science is taking in particular fields. Agricultural work was particularly important at the end of the 19th Century, but industrial projects expanded at the beginning of the 20th Century and during the war years. Today, research and industry collaborate; the technological advances by the science departments have made this possible in previously unimaginable ways. The archival research has yielded interesting information on the way each department affected and was affected by the changes in the structure, size, and focus of the University of Nebraska, in eras such as the agricultural recessions, wartime industrial booms, baby booms, and technological shrinking of geographical distances. The structuring and focus of scientific communities at the University of Nebraska have defined the direction of the university and of scientific progress.

Communities Of Comfort: Quilts to Comfort the Families of America’s Fallen in the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars

Jonathan Gregory — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:20:55 PDT

Beginning in 2003, grassroots quiltmaking projects were founded in the United States in response to Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Marine Comfort Quilts, founded by Jan Lang, Operation Homefront Quilts, founded by Jessica Porter, and Home of the Brave Quilt Project, founded by Donald Beld, each endeavor to make and give memorial quilts to each family of America’s fallen in these wars. Each project involves a community of volunteers scattered across the nation, many who have never met each other but who communicate through various communications technologies.

Oral history interviews were conducted with the founders of the three projects listed above and with other quiltmakers who are active within them in order to understand the meanings of making and giving quilts and the meanings of quilts as messengers of comfort and care from quiltmakers to grieving military families. Two primary sites of meaning were identified: 1) the internal motivations that inspired quiltmakers to begin and continue participation in a quiltmaking project; and 2) the textual, symbolic, and personal messages invested in and inherent within the quilts. These form a meaning-making process that effectively delivers the messages of comfort and care in spite of the social and geographical distance between quiltmakers and the military families.

Uncertain Transformation: The Role of Asceticism in Death in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers

Paul Ferderer — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:18:41 PDT

Between the second, third and fourth centuries the Christian Church produced biographies chronicling the pious undertakings of monks. These hagiographies borrowed from preexisting Greek biographies to distinguish the Christian monk from the pagan holy man. Patricia Cox Miller’s Biography in Late Antiquity: The Quest for the Holy Man demonstrates how hagiographers adaptation of Greek biographies allowed them to create idealized portraits of Christian holy men and distinguish them from their pagan counterparts. This paper applies Cox Miller’s method to examine portions of The Saints Lives, The Lausiac Histories and The History of the Monks of Egypt in order to demonstrate the shared conception of death within these works. This paper argues that hagiographers desire to present idealized holy men created a distinct and consistent portrayal of death in their writing. Hagiographers’ articulation of the monk’s power over death established a unique community within Late Antiquity based on mastery over mortality through monastic life.

The monk’s mastery over death is a large part of his authority in Late Antiquity. Hagiographers constructed their narratives to not only to edify but to persuade their audience. These narratives transformed individual monks into an imagined community. The monk’s triumph at the hour of death mirrors that of the Christian Church over paganism in the religious marketplace of Late Antiquity.

Uncle Sam’s Farm: Congress and Free Land Policies in the Nineteenth Century

Tonia M. Compton — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:59:19 PDT

This paper explores the community of the U.S. Congress and its various approaches to the dispersal of the public domain over the course of the nineteenth century. Congressional decisions stand not only as the work of a community of lawmakers, but also, through individual votes, reflect the values and beliefs of the communities represented by individual legislators. This paper seeks to understand how the Congressional community understood the various issues related to free land legislation, beginning with preemption acts in the early nineteenth-century, and various other legislative efforts to govern the dispersal of the public domain. The paper will examine in depth the ways in which ideas about gender, race, and citizenship impacted three specific pieces of free-land legislation, beginning with the 1850 Oregon Donation Act. This research also considers these issues as related to the Homestead Act of 1862 and the 1887 General Allotment Act (1887). Ultimately, this paper explores how legislative decisions regarding the public domain were arrived at and what these decisions tell scholars about the community of Congress and the communities these men represented.

Lonely Sounds: Sonic Self Sufficiency, Personal Control, and Social Shields

Chris Rasmussen — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:56:03 PDT

In the winter of 1979 Sony introduced a hand-held cassette player called the Walkman—a device that catered to a mass culture that had come to demand personal control over the musical experience. The Walkman’s mobility allowed for unprecedented individual control over the environment: a barrier that kept unwanted sounds or unwanted others out. In the post World War II era, loneliness and recorded popular music became linked. For both the performer and audience, the musical experience had become more solitary and mediated over time. This separation occurred in the context of a historically individualistic culture that was placing ever-greater emphasis on the self. By the 1970s the celebration of the autonomy and sufficiency of the individual had been taken to new extremes with consequences for all aspects of American life. The story of popular recorded music’s journey out of the public and into the personal, therefore, represents only one part of a larger national story that includes privatized leisure generally, the expansion of the suburbs, the emergence of niche marketing, individualized spirituality from “born again” Christianity to New Age mysticism, and the emphasis on control over the body. It is a story that also includes the collapse of political consensus, increasing cynicism, and the rise of the new right. The lonely listening style of the late twentieth century therefore should concern anyone interested in the American experience.