Middle West Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal about the American Midwest

Middle West Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal about the American Midwest

Edited by Jon K. Lauck
Christopher R. Laingen and Jennifer Stinson, Associate Editors 

ISSN 2372-5664

eISSN 2372-5672

About

The Middle West Review is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal focused on studying the American Midwest, a “lost region” which has received far less scholarly attention than other American regions. Middle West Review is the only scholarly print publication dedicated exclusively to the study of the Midwest as a region. It provides a forum for scholars and non-scholars alike to explore the meaning of Midwestern identity, history, geography, society, culture, and politics. Overall, the mission of the Middle West Review is to join with like-minded associations, historical societies, writers, and scholars to help revitalize the study of the American Midwest. The inaugural issue of the journal was published in the fall of 2014 and since 2019 Middle West Review has made the University of South Dakota its home. 

Visit the journal's editorial website.

Table Of Contents

Volume 10, Number 1, Fall 2023
Special Issue: Symposium on Midwestern Environmental History

Contents

Introduction: The Endangered Ecosystem of Midwestern History
Jon K. Lauck 

Symposium on Midwestern Environmental History
Unearthing the Past: A Midwestern Environmental History Symposium
Camden Burd and Jennifer Kirsten Stinson, guest co-editors

Place Writing in the Root River Valley
James T. Spartz 

Sensing Death and Beauty: Mary Henderson Eastman’s Dahcotah, the Myth of Indian Vanishment, and the Environment on the Upper Mississippi River
Karl Nycklemoe 

“The Land Is the Only Thing”: Ojibwe Treaty Rights, Conservation, and Environmental Sovereignty
Katrina M. Phillips 

A Farm That Won’t Wear Out: Midwestern Conceptions of Soil in the Early Twentieth Century
Elizabeth Cafer du Plessis 

“Natural Channels”: Second Nature, the Illinois Central Railroad, and the Fortunes of Galena, Illinois
Patrick Allan Pospisek 

Sweet Solution, Sticky Situation: Mill Technology, Organized Labor, and the Midwestern Origins of High Fructose Corn Syrup
Brian James Leech 

“We were environmentalists long before it was popular”: Legacies of Settler Colonialism in the Coal-Based Pollution of the Midwest’s 1970s Energy Sector
Elizabeth Grennan Browning 

Book Reviews
James H. Madison, The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland
Michael D. Jacobs

Walter D. Kamphoefner, Germans in America: A Concise History
Samuel Boucher 

Lori J. Daggar, Cultivating Empire: Capitalism, Philanthropy, and the Negotiation of American Imperialism in Indian Country
John T. Peyton 

Melissa Ford, A Brick and A Bible: Black Women’s Radical Activism in the Midwest During the Great Depression
Alyssa P. Cole 

Jon K. Lauck, The Good Country: A History of the American Midwest, 1800–1900
Michael J. Lansing 

Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, When a Dream Dies: Agriculture, Iowa, and the Farm Crisis of the 1980s
Mark Friedberger 

Keith Wilhite, Contested Terrain: Suburban Fiction and U.S. Regionalism, 1945–2020
Marcia Noe

Stephen Kantrowitz, Citizens of a Stolen Land: A Ho-Chunk History of the Nineteenth-Century United States
Jonathan Kasparek

Matthew Smith, The Spires Still Point to Heaven: Cincinnati’s Religious Landscape, 1788–1873
Jon Butler

Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, The Overlooked Americans: The Resilience of Our Rural Towns and What It Means for Our Country
Dennis Boyles

Book Review Essays
Cherished Lives and Lasting Values: Memoirs of the Rural Midwest
Patrick Garry

Writing Midwestern State Histories
R. Douglas Hurt 

Media Review Essay
Jazz, Film Noir, and the Geography of Music: Revisiting Duke Ellington’s Score for Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
Anthony Ballas

Reflections
The Death of a Midwestern College
Jeff Bremer 

Superseding Academic Freedom: Erika Lopez Prater and Hamline University
Philip Christman 

Gordon Lightfoot: A Regionalist Retrospective
Zachary Michael Jack 

When Midwestern Cities Were the Richest in the Nation
Louis D. Johnston 

In the Shadow of the South and West: Centering Studies of Midwestern History
Kevin T. Mason 

The History Crisis: It’s Time to Look Outward
Jeremy Best and Amy J. Rutenberg 

Conversations
An Interview with Kathleen Neils Conzen
Jon K. Lauck

An Interview with Elizabeth Currid-Halkett
Jon K. Lauck

An Interview with Sonya Huber and Steven Moore
Jon K. Lauck

In Memorium 
John R. Wunder, 1945–2023
Todd M. Kerstetter 

Submissions & Book Reviews

Statement of Publishing Ethics


The Middle West Review accepts submissions on a rolling basis. We encourage readers to contribute original content that deepens the public’s understanding of the American Midwest in an accessible and thoughtful manner. Some examples of submission types include:

Submissions
Articles should run between 8,000-10,000 words and articulate a central thesis about the study of the Midwest. These works should build upon original research or new interpretations of existing sources. Book review essays should run roughly 2,000-2,500 words and discuss multiple books. Non-fiction essays should run roughly 3,000 words. See prior issues of Middle West Review for examples.  

All contributions will undergo a process of peer review spearheaded by the Middle West Review editors and executive board.

Submissions will either be accepted for publication outright, returned with a request to “revise and resubmit,” or rejected outright. All submissions will benefit from the comments and revisions of the Middle West Review editors and its editorial reviewers.
 

Stylistic Guidelines
Authors should consult the Chicago Manual of Style as they prepare to submit their manuscripts to Middle West Review. Works should use endnotes in accordance with that manual’s specifications. Please Times New Roman 12-point font. All written submissions should be double-spaced and have one-inch margins on all sides. Manuscripts should be clear, concise, and devoid of jargon. Refrain from using the first person or passive voice. Successful submissions will marshal a strong argument buttressed by adequate evidence, thoughtful analysis, and lucid prose. Furthermore, in keeping with the journal’s mission, manuscripts should use the Midwest as a category of analysis and seek to explain why their project matters for the study of this region.

Please feel free to submit your materials at any time to MWR@USD.edu. You can also send any questions about submissions and other matters to that address.

Statement of Principles
Middle West Review embraces the principles of open inquiry, free speech, intellectual diversity, and robust debate and discussion and believes they are crucial to the proper functioning of scholarly journals, higher education, and a society where unfettered expression and deliberation are prized ideals. Middle West Review adheres to the longstanding tenet of academic freedom which promotes an open marketplace of ideas among its editors, contributors, and readers. It strives to create a forum that reflects high standards of scholarship and places a premium on facts, logic, and evidence, as well as respecting all viewpoints embracing such standards and that are grounded in the process of critical thinking that has traditionally characterized scholarly endeavors. Middle West Review also welcomes intelligent and well-reasoned creative non-fiction and cultural criticism more generally. Toward these ends, Middle West Review specifically endorses the University of Chicago’s Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression (2015). More broadly, Middle West Review recognizes the importance of creating and sustaining academic and literary outlets in the nation’s far-flung and diverse regions and embraces the goals of regionalists who have sought to resist the dominant centers of cultural production in the nation and to create more platforms in order to foster a diversity of thought and creative enterprises.

Editorial Board

Editor-In-Chief

Jon K. Lauck, University of South Dakota


Associate Editors

Jennifer Stinson, Saginaw Valley State University 
Christopher R. Laingen, Eastern Illinois University


Assistant Associate Editor

Hannah Redder, New York University
David Grabitske, South Dakota State Historical Society 


Executive Editors

Richard J. Jensen, Montana State University–Billings

Paula Nelson, University of Wisconsin at Platteville

Gregory L. Schneider, Emporia State University

Graduate Student Assistant
Donald Keifert, University of South Dakota
 

Editorial Board

William Barillas, University of Wisconsin–La Crosse
 
Megan Birk, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
 
James F. Brooks, University of California–Santa Barbara
 
Jason Duncan, Aquinas College
 
Paul Finkelman, Gratz College
 
Patrick Garry, University of South Dakota
 
David F. Good, University of Minnesota–Twin Cities
 
Jeffrey Helgeson, Texas State University
 
R. Douglas Hurt, Purdue University
 
Suzzanne Kelley, North Dakota State University Press
 
Bill Peterson, State Historical Society of North Dakota
 
Sara A. Kosiba, Kent State University
 
Gregory S. Rose, The Ohio State University at Marion
 
Matthew Sanderson, Kansas State University
 
Andrew Seal, University of New Hampshire

Jeff Wells, Dickinson State University 


Book Review Editor

Jonathan Kasparek, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee


Media Review Editor

Adam Ochonicky, University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh

Announcements

Middle West Review has released the results for their survey made in conjunction with Emerson College Polling. Read more here.

Middle West Review seeks applications for the position of Associate Editor. Duties include managing submissions and the peer review process and proofreading. A knowledge of the workings of Dropbox is important. Letters of interest setting forth experience and qualifications and a CV should be sent to Dr. Paula Nelson (nelsonp1951@yahoo.com) by October 10, 2023.  
 
Middle West Review seeks proposals for a special issue on “The German Midwest.” No other American region saw a greater level of German immigration than the American Midwest. This migration led to a variety of unique ethnic organizations, voting patterns, and cultural mores. Send one-page proposals for a 5,000 word article about some dimension of the German Midwest and a CV to mwr@usd.edu by February 15, 2024.  
 
Middle West Review seeks proposals for a special issue on “Regional Geography(ies) of the Midwest.” Send one-page proposals for 4,000-word article focused on the concept of “regions” as it relates to Midwestern geography, boundaries, or borderlands and a CV to mwr@usd.edu by October 20, 2023.

Sponsoring Society

Middle West Review is affiliated with the Midwestern History Association. You may join the MHA here. Discounted subscriptions to Middle West Review are available as part of a membership bundle.

To learn more about the MHA, visit their website.

Resources

Reading List: Migration

This list of peer-reviewed materials features articles on many topics spanning Globalization, Genocide, Religion, Diaspora Communities, and other aspects on the topic of Migration.

Reading List: Willa Cather

This list of peer-reviewed articles & reviews centers on the work of acclaimed author (and UNL alum) Willa Cather. Known for her novels on the pioneer experience, her works are reexamined here through the lens of modern-day academics.

Reading List: Social Media

As online communities continue to widen their reach, so too does our list of peer-reviewed articles on various subjects including Journalism, Communal Narrative, Activism, Marketing, and Image Rehabilitation.

Reading List: Sports-Related Controversies, Social Issues, and Scandals

This sprawling list includes peer-reviewed articles on subjects as diverse as the fields of play they revolve around, including Violence in Sports, Gambling & Game Fixing, Drugs & Banned Substances, Mascots & Offensive Imagery, and other controversies.

Reading List: Women's Political Action in the U.S.

Resources for use in discussions of women's political activities in the U.S., both contemporary and historical.

Useful Links

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