Letters received and sent by Secretary of War Lewis Cass in the 1830s reveal much about relations between the U.S. government and Native Americans. In the immediate aftermath of the Indian Removal Act, signed into law on May 28, 1830, by President Andrew Jackson, some letters came from interpreters and school teachers seeking payment for their…

Study of the weekly Methodist newspaper "Christian Advocate," from its inception in 1826 to 1832, reveals that Methodist women came to assume important, public, and rarely acknowledged rhetorical roles. More precisely, women moved beyond the confines of the newspaper's "Ladies' Department," the back-page space to which "women's concerns" were…

The winds of political change are blowing through America in 2008 and will sweep the party in power from the White House next November. That is the verdict of the Keys to the White House, a prediction system that the author developed in collaboration with Vladimir Keilis-Borok, founder of the International Institute of Earthquake Prediction Theory…

This article discusses how archival documents reveal early nineteenth-century Cherokee purposes for English-language literacy. In spite of Euro-American efforts to depoliticize Cherokee women's roles, Cherokee female students adapted the literacy tools of an outsider patriarchal society to retain public, political power. Their writing served…

Universities around the world have been affected by the recent global economic crisis. Many are challenged by reduced resources, yet they also face greater demands to help spur recovery in their respective countries. This paper explores how colleges and universities in the United States were affected by, and subsequently responded to, several 20th…

This document presents the proceedings of the 19th Annual Research Forum held June 26, 2014, at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Included are the following 17 action research papers: (1) Using Voices to Change Minds: Oral Performance and Poetry in the English Classroom (Erika Bunpermkoon), (2) Imagining Audiences: The Use…

This historical study examined the Civilian Conservation Corps as an educational endeavor during the New Deal era. Specifically, it considered the CCC as an organization which utilized educational technologies of the day, while also serving as a mass medium to communicate what was possible through the New Deal to the American public at large. In…

In this study, we compare federal government influence on abstinence-only programs in 1999 and 2003 to better see how shifts in the federal government's sex education polices impacted other government and community actors. Using data from the Sex Education in America Surveys (SEAS), we find that changes in federal policy, particularly after the…

Bibliographic classification is culturally bound. This research examines the classification systems created for social libraries in the first half of the nineteenth century in the United States. Social libraries are defined as institutions that have voluntary membership and are dependent on membership fees. Seventeen classified catalogs were…

One subject on which students are rarely shy to express an opinion is school lunches, which the author turns into a teachable moment for U.S. history classes. Historically, school lunches have played an important role in providing nutrition for low-income students. On February 7, 1946, in response to an urgent bulletin sent to all Florida school…

This article relies on Critical Race Theory (CRT) to examine the development of a critical consciousness necessary to understand the contradictions between the post-civil rights notion of abstract equality and the reality of structurally entrenched inequality. The authors' ground their analysis in narratives on the development of their own…

If the recent elections of a Black man to the presidency and a Hispanic woman to the Supreme Court of the United States, or news that Ku Klux Klan membership is down from its estimated high of 6 million in 1924 to about 8,000 in 2008 makes one think racism is gone from America, think again! Idaho residents still express concern about the image of…

Despite their differences in place and time, the woman-centered Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral and the Chicana lesbian feminist writer Gloria Anzaldua both looked to a transnational intellectual American history that frequently connected discourses of esotericism, indigenismo, and mestizaje. My comparative approach shows how both women used these…

The classic "Slaughterhouse-Five" (1969/1991) and other writings of American novelist, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., resonate with young people and are sometimes part of the required curriculum in secondary schools, which necessitates an exploration of the ideas and ideals to which youngsters are exposed. This article explores the Atomic Age…

This article presents an overview of the ongoing colonial context that perpetuates and supports violence against First Nations women. This context must be recognized and changed as a prerequisite to eliminating or reducing this violence. The article includes a discussion of how gender roles have changed under colonization, the extent of violence,…