The American Midwest
The American Midwest

Author: Andrew R. L. Cayton

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2006-11-08

Total Pages: 1918

ISBN-13: 0253003490

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This first-ever encyclopedia of the Midwest seeks to embrace this large and diverse area, to give it voice, and help define its distinctive character. Organized by topic, it encourages readers to reflect upon the region as a whole. Each section moves from the general to the specific, covering broad themes in longer introductory essays, filling in the details in the shorter entries that follow. There are portraits of each of the region's twelve states, followed by entries on society and culture, community and social life, economy and technology, and public life. The book offers a wealth of information about the region's surprising ethnic diversity -- a vast array of foods, languages, styles, religions, and customs -- plus well-informed essays on the region's history, culture and values, and conflicts. A site of ideas and innovations, reforms and revivals, and social and physical extremes, the Midwest emerges as a place of great complexity, signal importance, and continual fascination.

Midwestern Women
Midwestern Women

Author: Lucy Eldersveld Murphy

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 1997-12-22

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9780253211330

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Examining four centuries of Midwestern women's history, contributors discuss ways these women's lives both resemble and differ from those of women of other regions. Midwestern female experience is shown to be distinctive in terms of degrees of migration, which resulted in the Midwest becoming a cultural crossroads.

Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Volume Two
Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Volume Two

Author: Philip A. Greasley

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2016-08-08

Total Pages: 1074

ISBN-13: 0253021162

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The Midwest has produced a robust literary heritage. Its authors have won half of the nation's Nobel Prizes for Literature plus a significant number of Pulitzer Prizes. This volume explores the rich racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of the region. It also contains entries on 35 pivotal Midwestern literary works, literary genres, literary, cultural, historical, and social movements, state and city literatures, literary journals and magazines, as well as entries on science fiction, film, comic strips, graphic novels, and environmental writing. Prepared by a team of scholars, this second volume of the Dictionary of Midwestern Literature is a comprehensive resource that demonstrates the Midwest's continuing cultural vitality and the stature and distinctiveness of its literature.

Working the Past
Working the Past

Author: Charlotte Linde

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 019514029X

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Stories told within institutions play a powerful role, helping to define not only the institution itself, but also its individual members. How do institutions use stories? How do those stories both preserve the past and shape the future? To what extent does narrative construct both collective and individual identity? Charlotte Linde's unique and far-reaching study addresses these questions by looking at the interplay of narratives, memory, and identity in a large insurance company. Her detailed ethnography looks at the role of stories within the institution and how they are employed by its members in both private and group settings. Analyzing the re-telling of certain key stories, she shows how the formation of "core" stories and their multiple re-tellings and modifications provide a means of formulating and promoting a cohesive group identity - which in turn shapes the stories and identities of the individuals within the collective. Linde also looks at silences, and how stories not told also convey their version of the past. Working the Past shows how stories that might otherwise be seen as part of mundane daily life are in fact utterly essential to the formation and maintenance of individual and group identity. Her original research will appeal to those interested in narrative studies, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and institutional memory.