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Kansas History - Summer 2015

Kansas History, Summer 2015(Volume 38, Number 2)

Robert Llewellyn Tyler, "Identity, Culture Maintenance, and Social Mobility: The Welsh in Emporia, Lyon County, 1870–1930."

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In “Identity, Culture Maintenance, and Social Mobility,” Robert Llewellyn Tyler, a professor of history at University Wales, provides an analysis of the nature of the Welsh ethno-linguistic community in Emporia, Lyon County, Kansas, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The study considers the various forces in favor of culture maintenance and suggests that the Welsh in Emporia, to a large extent, fulfilled one of the main positive images so strongly promulgated by Welsh community leaders: socio-economic success. Although Kansas attracted relative few Welsh immigrants in the late nineteenth century, it “provides,” according to Professor Tyler, “opportunities for studies that produce significant insights, because . . . settlement patterns within the state made their presence in certain areas more noticeable.”

Jay M. Price, “'Peerless Princess of the Southwest': Boosterism and Regional Identity in Wichita, Kansas"

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Although today thought of as a city of the Midwest, Wichita’s identity has shifted several times during the city’s history. Initially, the city aligned itself with the Southwest, a region connected to Texas and Indian Territory, although occasionally, booster ambitions hoped for a greater role as a crossroads of the country. By the twentieth century, however, the term “Southwest” referred increasingly to the area around Arizona and New Mexico with distinct cultural and physical markers. Since then, Wichitans have seen themselves, at various times, as part of the Great Plains, the West, and the Midwest. At other times, local identity emphasized a “Center City, U.S.A.” image. In some places, regional affiliation is linked to tourism or specific ethnic or cultural groups. In Wichita, however, regional identifiers hearkened back to local promotion efforts to develop or highlight specific business and economic ties.

Thomas Prasch, edited and introduced, “'Facing This Vast Hardness': The Plains Landscape and the People Shaped by It in Recent Kansas/Plains Film"

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The eighth installment of Kansas History’s biennial film review series opens with a compelling introduction by Thomas Prasch and spotlights over a dozen films, from a Hollywood classic to low-budget documentaries and independent films. Interestingly, according to Prasch, many of this year’s features are connected by the idea of “prairie madness,” a theme “that haunts the literature and memoirs of the early Great Plains settlers, returns with a vengeance during the Dust Bowl 1930s, [and] surfaces with striking regularity even in recent writing of and about the plains.” Our classic, Dark Command, which starred John Wayne and Walter Pidgeon and was very loosely based on William Quantrill’s 1863 raid, marked the seventy-fifty anniversary of its Lawrence, Kansas, premier this past spring. More recent films include Nebraska, starring Bruce Dern; Road to Valhalla,a history of the Civil War on the Kansas–Missouri border written and directed by Ken Spurgeon; and Jayhawkers, Kevin Willmott’s film about Wilt Chamberlain and segregation in Lawrence during the 1950s.The eighth installment of Kansas History’s biennial film review series opens with a compelling introduction by Thomas Prasch and spotlights over a dozen films, from a Hollywood classic to low-budget documentaries and independent films. Interestingly, according to Prasch, many of this year’s features are connected by the idea of “prairie madness,” a theme “that haunts the literature and memoirs of the early Great Plains settlers, returns with a vengeance during the Dust Bowl 1930s, [and] surfaces with striking regularity even in recent writing of and about the plains.” Our classic, Dark Command, which starred John Wayne and Walter Pidgeon and was very loosely based on William Quantrill’s 1863 raid, marked the seventy-fifty anniversary of its Lawrence, Kansas, premier this past spring. More recent films include Nebraska, starring Bruce Dern; Road to Valhalla,a history of the Civil War on the Kansas–Missouri border written and directed by Ken Spurgeon; and Jayhawkers, Kevin Willmott’s film about Wilt Chamberlain and segregation in Lawrence during the 1950s.

Reviews

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Book Notes

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