Heartland History: Recent Episodes
Midwestern History Association
A scholarly association devoted to Midwestern history
The Midwestern History Association, created in the fall of 2014, is dedicated to rebuilding the field of Midwestern history, which has suffered from decades of neglect and inattention. The MHA will advocate for greater attention to Midwestern history among professional historians, seek to rebuild the infrastructure necessary for the study of the American Midwest, promote greater academic discourse relating to Midwestern history, support the work of the new journal Middle West Review and other journals which promote the study of the Midwest, and offer prizes to scholars who excel in the study of the Midwest.
Joanna Dee Das - Faith Family and Flag: Branson Entertainment and the Idea of AmericaHeartland History is the official podcast of the Midwestern History AssociationHosts: Josh Kluever, Kevin Mason
Cory Haala - When Democrats Won the Heartland: Progressive Populism in the Age of Reagan, 1978-1992Heartland History is the official podcast of the Midwestern History AssociationHosts: Josh Kluever, Kevin Mason
Robert M. Frame III - Making Mill City: Flour and Fortune in MinneapolisHeartland History is the official podcast of the Midwestern History AssociationHosts: Josh Kluever, Kevin Mason
Kevin Mason - Retracing the Dragoon Trail in Iowa: Environmental Transformation Along the Des Moines RiverHeartland History is the official podcast of the Midwestern History AssociationHosts: Josh Kluever, Kevin Mason
Jameson Sweet - Mixed-Blood Histories: Race, Law, and Dakota Indians in the Nineteenth-Century MidwestHeartland History is the official podcast of the Midwestern History AssociationHosts: Josh Kluever, Kevin Mason
Sid Shroyer - When Once Destroyed: A Historical Memoir of the Life and Death of a Small TownHeartland History is the official podcast of the Midwestern History AssociationHosts: Josh Kluever, Kevin Mason
Jonathan Jones - Opium Slavery: Civil War Veterans and America's First Opioid CrisisHeartland History is the official podcast of the Midwestern History AssociationHosts: Josh Kluever, Kevin Mason
Katie Batza - AIDS in the Heartland How Unlikely Coalitions Created a Blueprint for LGBTQ PoliticsRené Esparza - From Vice to Nice: Midwestern Politics and the Gentrification of AIDSHeartland History is the official podcast of the Midwestern History AssociationHosts: Josh Kluever, Kevin Mason
Coreen Derifield - We Were Still Ladies: Gender and Industrial Unionism in the Midwest After World War IIHeartland History is the official podcast of the Midwestern History AssociationHosts: Josh Kluever, Kevin Mason
Daniel Clark - Listening to Workers: Oral Histories of Metro Detroit Autoworkers in the 1950sHeartland History is the official podcast of the Midwestern History AssociationHosts: Josh Kluever, Kevin Mason
Thomas M. Nelson, Jerald Podair - Wrecked: The Edmund Fitzgerald and the Sinking of the American EconomyHeartland History is the official podcast of the Midwestern History AssociationHosts: Josh Kluever, Kevin Mason
David Hakensen - Her Place in the Woods: The Life of Helen HooverHeartland History is the official podcast of the Midwestern History AssociationHosts: Josh Kluever, Kevin MasonHosts Emeritus: Camden Burd, Ramya Swayamprakash, Jon Lauck
Tim Mulherin-This Magnetic North: Candid Conversations on a changing Northern Michigan by Midwestern History Association
Erik S. McDuffie - The Second Battle for Africa: Garveyism, the US Heartland, and Global Freedom by Midwestern History Association
Willa Hammit Brown - Gentlemen of the Woods: Manhood, Myth, and the American Lumberjack by Midwestern History Association
Josh Nygren - The State of Conservation: Rural America and the Conservation-Industrial Complex since 1920 by Midwestern History Association
Stephanie Ternullo discusses her new book, How the Heartland Went Red: Why Local Forces Matter in an Age of Nationalized Politics (Princeton University Press, 2024).
Paul Renfro discusses his new book, The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America (UNC Press, 2024).
Casey Huegel discusses his book, Cleaning Up the Bomb Factory:Grassroots Activism and Nuclear Waste in the Midwest
Dr. Carolina Ortega leads a discussion on Dr. Sergio Gonzalez's book, Stangers No Longer: Latino Belonging and Faith in Twentieth-Century Wisconsin, published by the University of Illinois Press.
Dr. Pamela Riney-Kehrberg discusses her new book, When a Dream Dies: Agriculture, Iowa, and the Farm Crisis of the 1980s.
Dr. Josiah Rector joins the podcast to talk about his recent book, Toxic Debt: An Environmental Justice History of Detroit.
Steven Conn discusses his new book, Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural America for What It Is - and Isn't.
Max Fraser discussers migration, labor, and culture in the Midwest by examining the experiences of migrant white workers in the region. The full book, Hillbilly Highway: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class, can be purchased at the Princeton University Press website, https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691191119/hillbilly-highway.
John Nelson - Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicago's Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent by Midwestern History Association
Dr. Melissa Ford joins us to discuss her new book A Brick and a Bible: Black Women's Activism in the Midwest During the Great Depression, published by Southern Illinois University Press.
Jon Lauck discussed his most recent book, The Good Country: A History of the American Midwest, 1800-1900.
Dr. Alonzo Ward is an assistant professor of history at Eastern Illinois University. He focuses on African American history in the Midwest during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as the general history of race and ethnicity in the United States. Specifically, he researches African American labor history in Illinois in conjunction with the larger labor movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We are talking to him about his recent article “‘A Revolution in Labor:’ African Americans and Hybrid Labor Activism in Illinois during the Early Jim Crow Era,” which was recently published in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society.
Writer Steven Moore discusses his recent collection essays, The Distance from Slaughter County: Lessons from Flyover Country, recently published at the University of North Carolina Press.
Dr. Christopher Ali is the Pioneers Chair in Telecommunications and Professor of Telecommunications in the Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State. His research interests include media and telecommunications policy and regulation, broadband policy, critical political economy, critical geography, comparative media systems, qualitative research methods, media localism and local news.In this episode Dr. Ali discusses his book Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity (MIT Press, 2021).
Dr. Fernández-Jones discusses her research which appeared in an edited collection titled, Building Sustainable Worlds: Latinx Placemaking in the Midwest. She also discusses her forthcoming book, Making the MexiRican City: Migration, Placemaking, and Activism in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Both projects were published by University of Illinois Press.
Dr. Kai Bosworth discusses his book, Pipeline Populism: Grassroots Environmentalism in the Twenty-First Century which was recently published by the University of Minnesota Press.
Dr. Sasha Maria Suarez, an assistant professor of history at UW-Madison talks about her latest essay "Indigenizing Minneapolis: Building American Indian Community Infrastructure in the Mid-Twentieth Century,” which appears in Indian Cities: Histories of Indigenous Urbanism, published by the University of Oklahoma Press.
From the publisher: "From ancient metropolises like Pueblo Bonito and Tenochtitlán to the twenty-first century Oceti Sakowin encampment of NoDAPL water protectors, Native people have built and lived in cities—a fact little noted in either urban or Indigenous histories. By foregrounding Indigenous peoples as city makers and city dwellers, as agents and subjects of urbanization, the essays in this volume simultaneously highlight the impact of Indigenous people on urban places and the effects of urbanism on Indigenous people and politics.
The authors—Native and non-Native, anthropologists and geographers as well as historians—use the term “Indian cities” to represent collective urban spaces established and regulated by a range of institutions, organizations, churches, and businesses. These urban institutions have strengthened tribal and intertribal identities, creating new forms of shared experience and giving rise to new practices of Indigeneity. Some of the essays in this volume explore Native participation in everyday economic activities, whether in the commerce of colonial Charleston or in the early development of New Orleans. Others show how Native Americans became entwined in the symbolism associated with Niagara Falls and Washington, D.C., with dramatically different consequences for Native and non-Native perspectives. Still others describe the roles local Indigenous community groups have played in building urban Native American communities, from Dallas to Winnipeg.
All the contributions to this volume show how, from colonial times to the present day, Indigenous people have shaped and been shaped by urban spaces. Collectively they demonstrate that urban history and Indigenous history are incomplete without each other."
https://www.oupress.com/9780806176635/indian-cities/
Camden joins Drs. Andrew Klumpp, Pamela-Riney Kehrberg, and Rebecca Conard for a wide-ranging conversation about regionalism, state and local history, and a recent issue of The Annals of Iowa.
If you are interested in learning more about The Annals of Iowa, previous issues are available here: https://pubs.lib.uiowa.edu/annals-of-iowa/issues/
Camden and Phil have a wide-ranging conversation about the Midwest as a place and as an idea, focusing particuarly on Phil's lastest book Midwest Futures available from Belt Publishing (https://beltpublishing.com/products/midwest-futures). From the Publisher: The Midwest: Is it middle? Or is it Western? As Phil Christman writes in this idiosyncratic, critically acclaimed essay collection, these and other ambiguities might well be the region's defining characteristic. Deftly combining history, criticism, and memoir, Christman breaks his exploration of midwestern identity, past and present, into a suite of thirty-six brief, interconnected essays. Ranging across material questions of religion, race, class, climate, and Midwestern myth making, the result is a sometimes sardonic, often uproarious, and consistently thought-provoking look at a misunderstood place and the people who call it home.
Camden and Dr. Benjamin Park discuss Dr. Park's book "Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier."
From the Publisher: In Kingdom of Nauvoo, Benjamin E. Park draws on newly available sources to re-create the founding and destruction of the Mormon city of Nauvoo. On the banks of the Mississippi in Illinois, the early Mormons built a religious utopia, establishing their own army and writing their own constitution. For those offenses and others—including the introduction of polygamy, which was bitterly opposed by Emma Smith, the iron-willed first wife of Joseph Smith—the surrounding population violently ejected the Mormons, sending them on their flight to Utah. Throughout his absorbing chronicle, Park shows how the Mormons of Nauvoo were representative of their era, and in doing so elevates Mormon history into the American mainstream. https://wwnorton.com/books/9781631494864
Guest, Dr. Brandon Ward who is the author of the recent study "Living Detroit Environmental Activism in an Age of Urban Crisis" (Routledge 2021) has a wide-ranging conversation with Camden about the ways environmental concerns were inseparable from issues related to housing, civil rights, suburbanization, organized labor, and deindustrialization in Detroit. Dr. Ward also draws attention to the opportunities that greater awareness of this legacy in contemporary political discourse creates for Detroiters.
From the publisher: In Living Detroit, Brandon M. Ward argues that environmentalism in postwar Detroit responded to anxieties over the urban crisis, deindustrialization, and the fate of the city. Tying the diverse stories of environmental activism and politics together is the shared assumption environmental activism could improve their quality of life.
Detroit, Michigan, was once the capital of industrial prosperity and the beacon of the American Dream. It has since endured decades of deindustrialization, population loss, and physical decay – in short, it has become the poster child for the urban crisis. This is not a place in which one would expect to discover a history of vibrant expressions of environmentalism; however, in the post-World War II era, while suburban, middle-class homeowners organized into a potent force to protect the natural settings of their communities, in the working-class industrial cities and in the inner city, Detroiters were equally driven by the impulse to conserve their neighborhoods and create a more livable city, pushing back against the forces of deindustrialization and urban crisis. Living Detroit juxtaposes two vibrant and growing fields of American history which often talk past each other: environmentalism and the urban crisis. By putting the two subjects into conversation, we gain a richer understanding of the development of environmental activism and politics after World War II and its relationship to the crisis of America’s cities.
https://www.routledge.com/Living-Detroit-Environmental-Activism-in-an-Age-of-Urban-Crisis/Ward/p/book/9780367334420
This episode, Camden sits down with Edward E. Curtis IV who is the William M. and Gail M. Plater Chair of Liberal Arts & Professor of Religious Studies at IUPUI. Dr. Curtis discusses his most recent book, Muslims of the Heartland: How Syrian Immigrants Made a Home in the American Midwest (New York University Press).
From the publisher: "The American Midwest is often thought of as uniformly white, and shaped exclusively by Christian values. However, this view of the region as an unvarying landscape fails to consider a significant community at its very heart. Muslims of the Heartland uncovers the long history of Muslims in a part of the country where many readers would not expect to find them.
Edward E. Curtis IV, a descendant of Syrian Midwesterners, vividly portrays the intrepid men and women who busted sod on the short-grass prairies of the Dakotas, peddled needles and lace on the streets of Cedar Rapids, and worked in the railroad car factories of Michigan City. This intimate portrait follows the stories of individuals such as farmer Mary Juma, pacifist Kassem Rameden, poet Aliya Hassen, and bookmaker Kamel Osman from the early 1900s through World War I, the Roaring 20s, the Great Depression, and World War II. Its story-driven approach places Syrian Americans at the center of key American institutions like the assembly line, the family farm, the dance hall, and the public school, showing how the first two generations of Midwestern Syrians created a life that was Arab, Muslim, and American, all at the same time.
Muslims of the Heartland recreates what the Syrian Muslim Midwest looked, sounded, felt, and smelled like—from the allspice-seasoned lamb and rice shared in mosque basements to the sound of the trains on the Rock Island Line rolling past the dry goods store. It recovers a multicultural history of the American Midwest that cannot be ignored."
https://nyupress.org/9781479812561/muslims-of-the-heartland/
On this edition of Heartland History, Camden is joined by Dr. Molly Rozum of the University of South Dakota to discuss her new book Grasslands Grown: Creating Place on the U.S. Northern Plains and Canadian Prairies.
From the University of Nebraska Press: "In Grasslands Grown Molly P. Rozum explores the two related concepts of regional identity and sense of place by examining a single North American ecological region: the U.S. Great Plains and the Canadian Prairie Provinces. All or parts of modern-day Alberta, Montana, Saskatchewan, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Manitoba form the center of this transnational region.
As children, the first postconquest generation of northern grasslands residents worked, played, and traveled with domestic and wild animals, which introduced them to ecology and shaped sense-of-place rhythms. As adults, members of this generation of settler society worked to adapt to the northern grasslands by practicing both agricultural diversification and environmental conservation.
Rozum argues that environmental awareness, including its ecological and cultural aspects, is key to forming a sense of place and a regional identity. The two concepts overlap and reinforce each other: place is more local, ecological, and emotional-sensual, and region is more ideational, national, and geographic in tone. This captivating study examines the growth of place and regional identities as they took shape within generations and over the life cycle."
You can find Dr. Rozum's book here, https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803285767/ or through independent book sellers.
This episode, Camden sits down with Dr. Lynne Heasley, Professor of Environment and Sustainability at WMU to discuss her new book "The Accidental Reef and Other Ecological Odysseys in the Great Lakes" (2021). Dr. Heasley's book is available through Michigan State University Press https://msupress.org/9781611864076/the-accidental-reef-and-other-ecological-odysseys-in-the-great-lakes/ or your local independent bookseller.
In this episode, Camden has a conversation with Professor Kristy Nabhan-Warren, who is the V.O. and Elizabeth Kahl Figge Chair in Catholic Studies Departments of Religious Studies and Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa, about her latest published research, "Meat Packing America: How Migration, Work, and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland" (2021). The book is available directly from UNC Press (https://uncpress.org/book/9781469663494/meatpacking-america/) or from your local bookseller.
Heartland History is back! We are thrilled to host a conversation with guest Dr. Dana Caldemeyer, Associate Professor of History at South Georgia State College. Dr. Caldemeyer talks with our new host Dr. Camden Burd about her new book "Union Renegades: Miners, Capitalism, and Organizing in the Gilded Age" (2021)published by the University of Illinois Press. Their conversation covers the tangled relationship of miners in the Midwest to labor organizations and to the corporate entities that employed them. If you are interested in Dr. Caldemeyer's book, follow this link or order a copy from your local independent bookseller: https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/39dem6cr9780252043505.html
Jillian Marie Jacklin of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of History interviews Sergio González who is the Assistant Professor of Latinx Studies in the Departments of History and of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Marquette University. Jacklin and González discuss his 2017 book "Mexicans in Wisconsin" published by the Wisconsin Historical Society, the vital importance of studying the past and present patterns of immigration in the Midwest (particularly in Milwaukee), as well as the political components of research on immigrant communities and citizenship in the contemporary cultural moment.
In addition to his 2017 book and his teaching, Dr. González serves on the editorial board of "Wisconsin 101: Our History in Objects" and is working on “Building Sustainable Worlds: Latinx Placemaking in the Midwest,” an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/Humanities Without Walls consortium-funded project.
Jillian Jacklin studies labor and working-class history with an emphasis on U.S. social movements and political activism. Her research and teaching interests include cultural and carceral studies, critical race theory, economic and industrial relations, gender studies, and the history of American capitalism. She has published work in the Journal of Folklore Research and has two articles forthcoming in the International Journal of Cuban Studies.
Guest contributor Professor Katie Day Good of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio interviews Professor Kathryn Remlinger, author of Yooper Talk: Dialect as Identity in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, published by the University of Wisconsin Press (2017). Professor Remlinger — in addition to helpfully explaining what a “Yooper” is! — discusses her work with linguistic identity in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the methodology behind her research, the history of settlement in the region, the immigrant populations that shaped the region economically, culturally, and linguistically, and the varieties of English dialects that emerged in the region.
For the 40th episode of the podcast, Jon talks with Liesl Olson about her new book published by Yale University Press, titled "Chicago Renaissance: Literature and Art in the Midwest Metropolis" (2017). Olson is the Director of Chicago Studies at the Newberry library and has taught at the University of Chicago, received fellowships from the National Endowment the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Newberry Library. Olson's first book Modernism and the Ordinary was published by Oxford University Press in 2009.
Jon interviews Steve Paul, a former Kansas City Star reporter and the author of “Hemingway at Eighteen: The Pivotal Year That Launched an American Legend,” published this month by Chicago Review Press. Paul discusses his work researching Hemingway, learning more about his connections to the Kansas City Star, and the importance of the Midwest to Hemingway’s identity and writing. Steve Paul will be speaking about “Hemingway at Eighteen” at the Iowa City Book Festival on at 2:30 PM on Saturday October 14th at the Iowa City Public Library.
Jon talks with author Melissa Fraterrigo, whose latest book titled "Glory Days" was published by the University of Nebraska Press in September of 2017. In the interview, Fraterrigo discusses growing up (and later living) all across the Midwest, how she became an author, and her love of teaching writing and literature as the current Director and as the Founder of the Lafayette Writers' Studio in Lafayette, Indiana.
One day away from Heartland History's one year anniversary, Jon talks about the background of the Iowa City Book Fair with John Kenyon, the Director of the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature. They also discuss the festival this year, the literary past and present of Iowa City, and the importance of Iowa's designation as only one of twenty UNESCO Cities of Literature globally. The Iowa City Book Festival runs from October 8th-15th.
Dr. Mark Soderstrom of SUNY Empire State College discusses his dissertation work on race, segregation, and housing at the University of Minnesota in the early 20th century, as well as an exhibit based on his research at the University of Minnesota's Elmer L. Andersen Library Atrium Gallery entitled "A Campus Divided: Progressives, Anti-Communists, Racism, and Anti-Semitism at the University of Minnesota, 1930-1942." The exhibit runs through November 30th of this year.
Tricia Oman, professor at Hastings College and director of Hastings College Press discusses growing up in the Midwest, discovering its literary heritage and prominence in the early 20th century, studying the growing cultural invisibility of Midwestern culture in latter half of the 20th century, the ways in which the Midwest has been defined popularly as “flyover country” by outsiders as to the region, and the nostalgia surrounding the Midwestern small town. Dr. Oman also talks about her work for the press rediscovering Midwestern texts, the press’s new series "Rediscovering the American Midwest," and a new book The Midwestern Moment (2017).
Dr. Bethel Saler discusses her 2015 book "The Settler's Empire: Colonialism and State Formation in America's Old Northwest" published by University of Pennsylvania Press.
The 1783 Treaty of Paris, which officially recognized the United States as a sovereign republic, also doubled the territorial girth of the original thirteen colonies. The fledgling nation now stretched from the coast of Maine to the Mississippi River and up to the Great Lakes. With this dramatic expansion, argues author Bethel Saler, the United States simultaneously became a postcolonial republic and gained a domestic empire. The competing demands of governing an empire and a republic inevitably collided in the early American West. The Settlers' Empire traces the first federal endeavor to build states wholesale out of the Northwest Territory, a process that relied on overlapping colonial rule over Euro-American settlers and the multiple Indian nations in the territory. These entwined administrations involved both formal institution building and the articulation of dominant cultural customs that, in turn, served also to establish boundaries of citizenship and racial difference. In the Northwest Territory, diverse populations of newcomers and Natives struggled over the region's geographical and cultural definition in areas such as religion, marriage, family, gender roles, and economy. The success or failure of state formation in the territory thus ultimately depended on what took place not only in the halls of government but also on the ground and in the everyday lives of the region's Indians, Francophone creoles, Euro- and African Americans, and European immigrants. In this way, The Settlers' Empire speaks to historians of women, gender, and culture, as well as to those interested in the early national state, the early West, settler colonialism, and Native history.
Matthew E. Stanley's intimate study The Loyal West: Civil War and Reunion in Middle America (University of Illinois Press) explores the Civil War, Reconstruction, and sectional reunion in this bellwether region. Using the lives of area soldiers and officers as a lens, Stanley reveals a place and a strain of collective memory that was anti-rebel, anti-eastern, and anti-black in its attitudes--one that came to be at the forefront of the northern retreat from Reconstruction and toward white reunion. The Lower Middle West's embrace of black exclusion laws, origination of the Copperhead movement, backlash against liberalizing war measures, and rejection of Reconstruction were all pivotal to broader American politics. And the region's legacies of white supremacy--from racialized labor violence to sundown towns to lynching--found malignant expression nationwide, intersecting with how Loyal Westerners remembered the war.
A daring challenge to traditional narratives of section and commemoration, The Loyal West taps into a powerful and fascinating wellspring of Civil War identity and memory.
Dr. Bruce Bigelow is a Professor of History at Butler University. His interest in teaching centers on the historical cultural geography of the US, especially the Midwest. He also teaches courses on the Civil War, US Urban History, the American Empire since 1945, the American Midwest, and World History. He also teaches Cultural Geography: Regions of the World for the core curriculum. Bruce's publications focus on Indiana during the Civil War, especially politics, and also the Midwest as a culture region.
Greg Dowd is a past chair of the the Department of American Culture (AC) and a past director of the AC Native American Studies program. His scholarly interests include the study of rumor and the history of the North American Indian East during the colonial, revolutionary, and early national periods. He has taught history at the University of Notre Dame, the University of Connecticut, and the University of the Witwatersrand (in Johannesburg, South Africa). He has held fellowships at the University of Michigan’s Institute for the Humanities, the Newberry Library (Chicago), and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. He wrote an expert witness report and gave professional testimony in deposition for tribes in a treaty-rights case in Michigan. He received his Ph.D. in History at Princeton University (1986) and his B.A. in History at the University of Connecticut (1978).
From the 47th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature in East Lansing, Michigan. Dr. Jeffrey Swenson (Hiram College) presents his paper "Defending the Revolt from the Village: Reinforcing Sinclair Lewis in the Age of Trump." Dr. Marcia Noe (University of Tennessee Chattanooga), Jon Lauck, and the audience respond.
Jeff Swenson's primary research focus is Midwestern Regionalism, including recent publications on authors Jim Tully, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and J.F. Powers. Beyond regionalism, he is interested in material culture–particularly the canoe–and its influence on literature and culture, as with the work of Canadian First-Nations author E. Pauline Johnson. His most recent scholarly work considers representations of Autism Spectrum Disorder in popular culture, particularly television.
Marcia Noe teaches courses in American literature and women's studies and is the Coordinator of the Women's Studies program. She is the author of Susan Glaspell: Voice from the Heartland and over twenty other publications on this Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright. In 1993 she was Fulbright Senior Lecturer-Researcher at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, Brazil; with Junia C.M. Alves, she has edited a collection of essays on the Brazilian theatre troupe Grupo Galpao (Editora Newton Paiva, 2006). She is a senior editor of The Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, editor of the journal MidAmerica, and chairs the editorial committee of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, which gave her the MidAmerica Award for distinguished contributions to the study of midwestern literature in 2003. She has supervised 27 student conference presentations and supervised or co-authored 27 student publications. In 2004 she won the UTC College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Teacher award and is an elected member of UTC's Council of Scholars and Alpha Society.
Matt Pehl, Assistant Professor of History at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Dr. Pehl specializes in twentieth century U.S. history, which a special interest in religion, race, gender, and working-class history. His book, The Making of Working-Class Religion, was published in 2016 by the University of Illinois Press.
Dave Page discusses the life and writings F. Scott Fitzgerald, in addition to, his latest work, F.Scott Fitzgerald In Minnesota: The Writer & His Friends At Home, published by University of Minnesota Press.
Andrew Jewell is a Professor of Digital Projects at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln Libraries and the editor of the Willa Cather Archive. Andy has published several essays on Willa Cather and other American writers, scholarly editing, and digital humanities. He is co-editor of the book The American Literature Scholar in the Digital Age (University of Michigan Press, 2011) and has edited, with Janis P. Stout, The Selected Letters of Willa Cather(Knopf, 2013). He also serves as co-editor of the open-access, digital journal Scholarly Editing: The Annual of the Association for Documentary Editing.
An interview with Scott Atkinson Editor-in-Chief of Belt Magazine and writing instructor at The University of Michigan-Flint. Scott is an award-winning journalist who has written for several publications including The New York Times, Vice, and Writer's Digest. He is also the editor of Belt Magazine and in 2016 edited Happy Anyway: A Flint Anthology from Belt Publishing.
Jon Lauck discusses The 49th annual Dakota Conference on the Northern Plains with Dr. Harry Thompson, Executive director for The Center for Western Studies at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, South Dakota
RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY IN THE NORTHERN PLAINS: OBSERVING THE 500TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE REFORMATION
The conference will be held April 21-22, 2017, in the CWS Fantle Building on the Augustana campus.
This year’s theme The 49th annual Dakota Conference on the Northern Plains will examine the variety of religious expression in the region, both historical and contemporary. Approximately 80 presenters from as many as 15 states gather to present papers and participate in panels to at this two-day national examines issues of contemporary significance to the region in their historical and cultural contexts. Recent topics of interest have included western highways, regional identity, World Wars I and II, Wounded Knee 1973, and Spanish exploration of and Hispanic/Latino immigration to the region
Patrick Kerin discusses his work as the President of the Greenhills Historical Society and "Buckeye Muse" his new blog which focuses on Ohio and Ohio Valley writers and and writing, past and present, and Ohio Valley literary culture, in addition to, sites of literary and historical significance in Ohio and the Ohio Valley.
Jonathan Kasparek, Associate Professor of History at University of Wisconsin, Waukesha discusses progressive politics in Wisconsin and his recent book, "Fighting Son: A Biography of Philip F. LaFollette," which traces La Follette's journey through public office, as well as, his life after the waning of the Progressive era.
An interview with Dr. Nancy Berlage, professor of History at Texas State University. Her research and teaching interests include public history, the American political culture, and rural culture. Dr. Berlage discusses her most recent work, Farmers Helping Farmers The Rise of the Farm and Home Bureaus was published by Louisiana State University Press in July 2016. Berlage explores how bureaus (more specifically the American Farm Bureau) served as the locus of science-based agriculture for rural communities. Drawing on community bonds and culturally powerful metaphors to overcome skepticism, bureaus played a critical role in circulating knowledge grounded in the new disciplines of agricultural economics, rural sociology, home economics, veterinary medicine, child science, and public health.
An in-depth interview with Dr. Christopher Phillips, Professor of History and Department Head, at the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Phillips discusses his new book, "The Rivers Ran Backward: The Civil War and the Remaking of the American Middle Border" which underscores the regional consciousness during this divisive time period.
An interview with Dr. Philip Greasley, Professor of English at The University of Kentucky and editor for the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature (SSML). Dr. Greasley discusses the influence of Midwestern literature, the Chicago Renaissance, and his work on Dictionary of Midwestern Literature Vol. 2: Dimensions of the Midwestern Literary Imagination published in August of 2016.
An interview with Dr. Silvana R. Siddali Associate Professor, Eugene A. Hotfelder Professor of Humanities at St. Louis University.
Dr. Siddali discusses her book, " Frontier Democracy: Constitutional Conventions in the Old Northwest" and her examination of "the debates over state constitutions in the antebellum Northwest (Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin) from the 1820s through the 1850s. This is a book about conversations: in particular, the fights and negotiations over the core ideals in the constitutions that brought these frontier communities to life."
Dr. Michael D. Steiner, Emeritus Professor of American Studies at California State University- Fullerton discusses his recent work, Regionalist on the Left: Radical Voices from the American West, sense of place and space, cultural geography in relation to regionalism.
Dr. Larry Lockridge, Professor Emeritus of English at New York University, discusses his work, Shade of the Raintree: The Life and Death of Ross Lockridge, Jr., Author of Raintree County. While Raintree County is itself a highly developed historical novel about Indiana during the Civil War, Lockridge eloquently underscores the historical consciousness coursing through the Lockridge family, which encompasses his deep Indiana roots and the prevailing influences of Midwestern life.
Adam Arenson, Professor of History at Manhattan College discusses his book- The Great Heart of the Republic St. Louis and the Cultural Civil War. Dr. Arenson illuminates how the American Civil War, expanded beyond military battles ultimately causing a cultural civil war among North, South, and West, as their leaders sought to shape Manifest Destiny and slavery politics.
An interview with Pulitzer-Prize winning historian, Steven Hahn. Dr. Hahn discusses his latest book, A Nation without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910.
James Connolly Director, Center for Middletown Studies and George and Frances Ball Distinguished Professor of History, at Ball State University in Muncie Indiana, discusses his past and recent projects including his work on “What Middletown Read,” a study of print culture and urban life at the turn of the twentieth century, in collaboration with Frank Felsenstein.
Marvin Bergman discusses his work as Editor the Annals of Iowa, the State Historical Society of Iowa’s quarterly, scholarly history journal. Since 1987, Dr. Bergman has worked to make the best interpretive work on Iowa history accessible to the public by contributing his knowledge and talent to several other publications including the Iowa History Reader (University of Iowa Press edition, 2008), co-editing Unionizing the Jungles: Labor and Community in the Twentieth-Century Meatpacking Industry (University of Iowa Press, 1997)with Shelton Stromquist. and co editing The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa (University of Iowa Press, 2008)with David Hudson and Loren Horton.
Jon Butler, the Howard R. Lamar Professor Emeritus of American Studies, History, and Religious Studies at Yale University discusses his work and the importance of studying the history of the Midwest. His publications include “Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People,” which earned the American Historical Association’s Beveridge Award for the best book in American history in 1990, “Becoming America: The Revolution Before 1776," published in 2000, and his current research focuses on religion in the late 19th and early 20th century Manhattan. (photo courtesy of Yale University, Department of History)
National Register Historian Denis Gardner, Minnesota Historical Society. Denis discusses the importance of the National Register, historic preservation, and its role in state and local history initiatives. In addition to his work as National Register Historian, Denis has published a number of books including "Wood, Concrete, Stone, and Steel: Minnesota's Historic Bridges" and "Minnesota Treasures: Stories Behind the State's Historic Places."
David serves as the field services manager for the Minnesota Historical Society travelling nearly 35,000 miles a year to engage with, and assist, local historical societies, His recent publications include "Building Museums: a handbook for small and midsize organizations" and a history about Sarah Jane Sibly, the first Governor's Wife (modern First Lady) of Minnesota, "Six Miles from St. Paul: the family and society of Sarah Jane Sibley" reveals how Sarah led the first historic preservation effort in Minnesota, and was key to setting social patterns that endure. The story, meticulously researched and illustrated, is told through the observations of her by her family and friends.
Jenny Barker Devine discusses her book, "On Behalf of the Family Farm" which traces the development of women’s activism and agrarian feminisms in the Midwest after 1945, as farm women’s lives were being transformed by the realities of modern agriculture. She has won several prizes for her research, including the Zaffarano Prize for Graduate Student Research at Iowa State University (she was the first nonscientist to win it), the Carrie Chapman Catt Prize for Research on Women in Politics, the Phi Alpha Theta Doctoral Scholarship, and the Ernest G. Hildner, Jr., Faculty Award of Illinois College. She has also received research grants from the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, the Richard S. Brownlee Fund of the State Historical Society of Missouri, and the State Historical Society of Iowa.
Paul Stone Professor of History, University of Minnesota, Humphrey School of Public Affairs discusses regionalist impulses of the early 20th century. Dr. Stone's research focuses on American political and institutional history, behavior in American public life, and Minnesota political history.
Jon Lauck interviews Kevin Ehrman-Solberg, Web Developer and GIS Director for The Historyapolis Project, a collaborative endeavor that relies on the complementary skills of academic historians, community researchers, archivists, museum professionals, students and technologists. We work together to make history that matters in Minneapolis.
Kevin interrogates the intersection of space and historical narrative. His work on pornography bookstores in Minneapolis was recently published in the Middle West Review, where he explores the connections between pornography, gay sexual liberation, feminism, and police power.
Dr. Bill Green discusses race and civil rights in Minnesota history. His recent book, A Peculiar Imbalance in Early Minnesota: 1837-1869, and Degrees of Freedom: The Origin of Civil Rights in Minnesota, 1865-1914, won the 2015 Minnesota Book Award-Hognander Prize.
Michael J. Lansing. Augsburg College,Associate Professor, History Department Chair discusses his research on the North American West, political history, environmental history, and gender history. His current project is The Cradle of Carbohydrates: Minneapolis and the Making of the World’s Food, an environmental and urban history of the city’s central role in the creation and propagation of carbohydrate-rich processed and packaged foods.His books include Insurgent Democracy: The Nonpartisan League in North American Politics (University of Chicago Press, 2015) and the co-authored The American West: A Concise History (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008).
Caitlyn Perry Dial, Interim Director,The Michigan Women’s Historical Center and Hall of Fame
Episode Three David Brodnax, Professor of History at Trinity Christian College in Illinois. Dr. Brodnax broad research interests include African American Midwestern History, U.S. Legal History, U.S. History, Latin American Legal History. Today he discusses his current work , ““Breathing the Freedom’s Air”: The African American Struggle for Equal Citizenship in Iowa, 1830-1900” and the significance the African American experience in the Midwest.
Dr. James H. Madison discusses Indiana history, the importance of local and regional history, and Indiana 's role in the American Civil War
Andrew Seal, PhD candidate , American Studies at Yale University discusses his research on the American Midwest, Midwestern identity, and essentialism.