From the agoraphobic prairie where the father of Willa Cather's Antonia kills himself, to the claustrophobic North Dakota town of Argus devastated by storm in Louise Erdrich's "Fleur," to Lightning Flat, the grim home of Jack Twist in Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain," much Great Plains literature is situational, placing…

Bringing history home, an elementary history curriculum and professional development project, began in 2001. As originally conceived, the project's main purpose was to move history from the margins described by Bruce VanSledright into the mainstream of the K-5 school day. Seven years later, the Bringing History Home (BHH) instructional units are…

Era Bell Thompson's "American Daughter", published in 1946 by the University of Chicago Press, is an autobiographical account of an African American woman who comes of age on the plains of North Dakota in the early twentieth century. It deserves to read and included in Great Plains studies because it recounts one of the rarest of…

Discusses using novels set in North and South Dakota and Nebraska for geography instruction. Novels examined are: "The Emigrants" (Bojer), "Giants in the Earth" (Rolvaag), "Spring Came on Forever" (Aldrich), "Take All to Nebraska" (Winther), and "My Antonia" (Cather). (KC)

Representative Usher Burdick, who sat between 1949-1959, contributed to the isolationist label given to North Dakota. This Republican politician, not enthusiastic about U.S. participation in the Korean War, eagerly lambasted foreign aid during the Truman-Eisenhower years. Above all, the congressman attracted attention during the postwar period for…

In the fall of 2001 I taught a beginning college composition course at Minot State University, a small state university located in the northwestern quadrant of North Dakota. It is typical of such courses to include a fair amount of reading, and one of the texts I assigned was Ian Frazier's "Great Plains". The book is a travelogue that…

Discusses the use of oral history within a North Dakota state history course at the University of North Dakota (Grand Forks). Addresses how the students are prepared to conduct oral history interviews. Relates the information students found within their oral history interviews and the benefits of oral history. (CMK)

Aboard a train heading out of Minneapolis toward frontier North Dakota, Era Bell Thompson in her autobiography "American Daughter" (1946) describes a landscape that grows steadily bleaker with each mile farther west: "Suddenly there was snow--miles and miles of dull, white snow, stretching out to meet the heavy, gray sky; deep banks…

Recalls the experiences of two North Dakota men who worked in New Deal jobs programs during the depression. Provides a personal look at the achievements and the administration of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Includes classroom suggestions for teachers. (MJP)