Download or read book Reflecting a Prairie Town written by Drake Hokanson and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uses history, geography, climatology, botany, oral history, archaeology, agricultural science, literature, geology, photography, and astronomy to portray Peterson, Iowa
Download or read book Reflecting a Prairie Town written by and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hokanson (writing, Lakeland College) looks at the town of Peterson, Iowa, its history, and our enduring need for a sense of place. He synthesizes geography, oral history, archaeology, science, and literature in his portrait of this small farming town. Includes bandw historical and modern photos of Peterson's faces and landscapes. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Prairie Town written by Bonnie Geisert and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1998 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes a year in the life of a prairie town including the effect of seasons and of economics on the ebb and flow of this agricultural community.
Download or read book Prairie Town written by Jacqueline Edmondson and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2003-06-05 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prairie Town: Redefining Rural Life in the Age of Globalization describes the contemporary rural condition and efforts to sustain rural life in one small Minnesota community at the turn of the 21st century. Like many other agricultural based towns, Prairie Town struggled for survival within the context of the on-going farm crisis, NAFTA, neoliberal agricultural policies, and growing agribusiness that negatively impacted many farmers throughout the world. The effects of globalization, the displacement of rural workers to urban areas, and the deterioration of rural life were a widespread phenomenon. In spite of these complex issues, Prairie Town worked to define a new rural— life, one which entailed a new rural literacy—a new way of reading rural life-that changed the way rural life, work, and education were realized. Prairie Town's story offers us hope as we learn that neoliberalism is not inevitable, nor is the demise of rural America. From this community, we learn that not everything can be bought and sold, and disidentification with dominant societal structures is possible within a participatory democratic society. New cultural models can be constructed that enable individuals in Prairie Town and elsewhere to actively work to construct ways of being that are consistent with their values and hopes for how they might live together.
Download or read book Dynamics of Small Town Ministry written by Lawrence W. Farris and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2000-05-01 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unique in character and cultural distinctions, small towns present special challenges for pastors, especially for those whose models of ministry may be grounded in urban or suburban contexts. Writing out of his personal experience in and commitment to small town ministry, Farris explores the impact and importance of such factors as local history, geography, the values and metaphors of small town life, boundary setting, and ministerial roles. For everyone involved in small town ministry, this book is a “must-read.” Foreword by Norma Cook Everist.
Download or read book Prairie Town written by Jacqueline Edmondson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2003 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like many other agricultural based towns, Prairie Town struggled for survival within the context of the on-going farm crisis, NAFTA, neoliberal agricultural policies, and growing agribusiness that negatively impacted many farmers throughout the world.
Download or read book Rural Development Perspectives written by and published by . This book was released on 1995-10 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Iowa History Reader written by Marvin Bergman and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2008-03-15 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1978 historian Joseph Wall wrote that Iowa was “still seeking to assert its own identity. . . . It has no real center where the elite of either power, wealth, or culture may congregate. Iowa, in short, is middle America.” In this collection of well-written and accessible essays, originally published in 1996, seventeen of the Hawkeye State’s most accomplished historians reflect upon the dramatic and not-so-dramatic shifts in the middle land’s history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Marvin Bergman has drawn upon his years of editing the Annals of Iowa to gather contributors who cross disciplines, model the craft of writing a historical essay, cover more than one significant topic, and above all interpret history rather than recite it. In his preface to this new printing, he calls attention to publications that begin to fill the gaps noted in the 1996 edition. Rather than survey the basic facts, the essayists engage readers in the actual making of Iowa’s history by trying to understand the meaning of its past. By providing comprehensive accounts of topics in Iowa history that embrace the broader historiographical issues in American history, such as the nature of Progressivism and Populism, the debate over whether women’s expanded roles in wartime carried over to postwar periods, and the place of quantification in history, the essayists contribute substantially to debates at the national level at the same time that they interpret Iowa’s distinctive culture.
Download or read book American Hometown Renewal written by Gary A. Mattson and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before the interstates, Main Street America was the small town’s commercial spine and served as the linchpin for community social solidarity. Yet, during the past three decades, a series of economic downturns has left many of the great small cities barely viable. American Hometown Renewal is the first book to combine administrative, budgetary, and economic analysis to examine the economic and fiscal plight currently facing America’s small towns. Featuring a blend of theory, applications, and case studies, it provides a comprehensive, single-source textbook covering the key issues facing small town officials in today’s uncertain economy. Written by a former public manager, university professor, and consultant to numerous small towns in the Heartland, this book demonstrates the ways in which contemporary small towns throughout the nation are facing economic challenges brought about by the financial shocks that began in 2008. Each chapter explores a theme related to small town revival and provides a related tool or technique to enable small town officials to meet the challenges of the 21st Century. Encouraging local small town officials to look at the economic orbit of communities in a similar manner as a town’s budget or a family’s personal wealth, examining its specific competitive advantages in terms of relative assets to those of competing communities, this book provides the reader with step-by-step instructions on how to conduct an asset inventory and apply key asset tools to devise a strategy for overcoming the challenges and constraints imposed upon spatially-fixed communities. American Hometown Renewal is an essential primer for students studying city management, economic community development, and city planning, and will be a trusted handbook for city managers, geographers, city planners, urban or rural sociologists, political scientists, and regional microeconomists.
Download or read book Towns Ecology and the Land written by Richard T. T. Forman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-07 with total page 637 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Towns and villages are sometimes viewed as minor, even quaint, spots, whereas this book boldly reconceptualizes these places as important dynamic environmental 'hotspots'. Multitudes of towns and villages with nearly half the world's population characterize perhaps half the global land surface. The book's pages feature ecological patterns, processes, and change, as well as human dimensions, both within towns and in strong connections and effects on surrounding agricultural land, forest land, and arid land. Towns, small to large, and villages are examined with spatial and cultural lenses. Ecological dimensions - water, soil and air systems, together with habitats, plants, wildlife and biodiversity - are highlighted. A concluding section presents concepts for making better towns and better land. From a pioneer in both landscape ecology and urban ecology, this highly international town ecology book opens an important frontier for researchers, students, professors, and professionals including environmental, town, and conservation planners.
Download or read book The Farm at Holstein Dip written by Carroll Engelhardt and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2012-08-15 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Carroll Engelhardt brings us into the world of his fourth-generation farm family, who lived by the family- and faith-based work ethic and concern for respectability they inherited from their German and Norwegian ancestors. The Farm at Holstein Dip is both a loving coming-of-age memoir and an educational glimpse into rural and small-town life of the 1940s and 1950s."--Page 4 of cover.
Download or read book Horror Films of the 1990s written by John Kenneth Muir and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2011-10-06 with total page 716 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This filmography covers more than 300 horror films released from 1990 through 1999. The horror genre's trends and cliches are connected to social and cultural phenomena, such as Y2K fears and the Los Angeles riots. Popular films were about serial killers, aliens, conspiracies, and sinister "interlopers," new monsters who shambled their way into havoc. Each of the films is discussed at length with detailed credits and critical commentary. There are six appendices: 1990s cliches and conventions, 1990s hall of fame, memorable ad lines, movie references in Scream, 1990s horrors vs. The X-Files, and the decade's ten best. Fully indexed, 224 photographs.
Download or read book Little Town on the Prairie written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-03-08 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The seventh book in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s treasured Little House series, and the recipient of a Newbery Honor—now available as an ebook! This digital version features Garth Williams’s classic illustrations, which appear in vibrant full color on a full-color device and in rich black-and-white on all other devices. The settlement that weathered the long, hard winter of 1880-81 is now a growing town. With spring comes a new job for Laura, town parties, and more time to spend with Almanzo Wilder. Laura also tries to help Pa and Ma save money so that Mary is able to go to a college for the blind. The nine Little House books are inspired by Laura’s own childhood and have been cherished by generations of readers as both a unique glimpse into America’s frontier history and as heartwarming, unforgettable stories.
Download or read book Rooted written by David R. Pichaske and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2009-05 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Pichaske has been writing and teaching about midwestern literature for three decades. In Rooted, by paying close attention to text, landscape, and biography, he examines the relationship between place and art. His focus is on seven midwestern authors who came of age toward the close of the twentieth century, their lives and their work grounded in distinct places: Dave Etter in small-town upstate Illinois; Norbert Blei in Door County, Wisconsin; William Kloefkorn in southern Kansas and Nebraska; Bill Holm in Minneota, Minnesota; Linda Hasselstrom in Hermosa, South Dakota; Jim Heynen in Sioux County, Iowa; and Jim Harrison in upper Michigan. The writers' intimate knowledge of place is reflected in their use of details of geography, language, environment, and behavior. Yet each writer reaches toward other geographies and into other dimensions of art or thought: jazz music and formalism in the case of Etter; gender issues in the case of Hasselstrom; time past and present in the case of Kloefkorn; ethnicity and the role of the artist in the case of Blei; magical realism in the case of Heynen; the landscape of literature in the case of Holm; and the curious worlds of academia, best-selling novels, and Hollywood films in the case of Harrison. The result, Pichaske notes, is the growing away from roots, the explorations and alter egos of these writers of place, and the tension between the “here” and “there” that gives each writer's art the complexity it needs to transcend provincial boundaries. Quoting generously from the writers, Pichaske employs a practical, jargon-free literary analysis fixed in the text, making Rooted interesting, readable, and especially useful in treating the literary categories of memoir and literary essay that have become important in recent decades.
Download or read book Sum of the Parts written by Kent C Ryden and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proponents of the new regional history understand that regional identities are constructed and contested, multifarious and not monolithic, that they involve questions of dominance and power, and that their nature is inherently political. In this lively new book, writing in the spirit of these understandings, Kent Ryden engagingly examines works of American regional writing to show us how literary partisans of place create and recreate, attack and defend, argue over and dramatize the meaning and identity of their regions in the pages of their books. Cleverly drawing upon mathematical models that complement his ideas and focusing on both classic and contemporary literary regionalists, Ryden demonstrates that regionalism, in the cultural sense, retains a great deal of power as a framework for literary interpretation. For New England he examines such writers as Robert Frost and Hayden Carruth, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Edith Wharton, and Carolyn Chute and Russell Banks to demonstrate that today’s regionalists inspire closer, more democratic readings of life and landscape. For the West and South, he describes Wallace Stegner’s and William Faulkner’s use of region to, respectively, exclude and evade or confront and indict. For the Midwest, he focuses on C. J. Hribal, William Least Heat-Moon, Paul Gruchow, and others to demonstrate that midwesterners continually construct the past anew from the materials at hand, filling the seemingly empty midlands with history and significance. Ryden reveals that there are many Wests, many New Englands, many Souths, and many Midwests, all raising similar issues about the cultural politics of region and place. Writing with appealing freshness and a sense of adventure, he shows us that place, and the stories that emerge from and define place, can be a source of subversive energy that blunts the homogenizing force of region, inscribing marginal places and people back onto the imaginative surface of the landscape when we read it on a place-by-place, landscape-by-landscape, book-by-book basis.
Download or read book The Meaning of Rivers written by T. S. McMillin and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the continental United States, rivers serve to connect state to state, interior with exterior, the past to the present, but they also divide places and peoples from one another. These connections and divisions have given rise to a diverse body of literature that explores American nature, ranging from travel accounts of seventeenth-century Puritan colonists to magazine articles by twenty-first-century enthusiasts of extreme sports. Using pivotal American writings to determine both what literature can tell us about rivers and, conversely, how rivers help us think about the nature of literature, The Meaning of Rivers introduces readers to the rich world of flowing water and some of the different ways in which American writers have used rivers to understand the world through which these waters flow. Embracing a hybrid, essayistic form—part literary theory, part cultural history, and part fieldwork—The Meaning of Rivers connects the humanities to other disciplines and scholarly work to the land. Whether developing a theory of palindromes or reading works of American literature as varied as Henry David Thoreau's A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and James Dickey’s Deliverance, McMillin urges readers toward a transcendental retracing of their own interpretive encounters. The nature of texts and the nature of “nature” require diverse and versatile interpretation; interpretation requires not only depth and concentration but also imaginative thinking, broad-mindedness, and engaged connection-making. By taking us upstream as well as down, McMillin draws attention to the potential of rivers for improving our sense of place and time.
Download or read book The Only Dance in Iowa written by Max McElwain and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Iowa six-player girls' basketball was the most successful sporting activity for girls in American history, at its zenith involving more than 70 percent of the girls in the state. The state tournament was so popular-regularly drawing fifteen thousand fans, more than the boys' tourney-that officials declined a lucrative broadcasting offer from ABC's Wide World of Sports rather than forfeit the Iowa Girls' High School Athletic Union's control of the game. The Only Dance in Iowa chronicles the one-hundred-year history of this Iowa tradition, long a symbol of the state's independence and the people's rural pride. Max McElwain shows how, well before the passage of Title IX in 1972, Iowa six-player girls' basketball was, as Sports Illustrated gushed, "a utopia for girls' athletics." He also demonstrates how, ironically enough, the fallout from Title IX in many ways led to six-girl basketball's demise. Through interviews, careful ethnography, and detailed historical analysis, McElwain exposes the intricate political, sociological, and historical dynamics of this cultural phenomenon. His book reveals how six-girl basketball, flourishing with the passionate support of Iowa's small towns, school districts, and media, came to represent the state's strong traditional beliefs and the public school system's determination to maintain its identity in the face of national educational trends. The Only Dance in Iowa is as much a study of this disappearing culture as of the game it claimed as its own. Max McElwain, an assistant professor of communication arts at Wayne State College, is a former sportswriter for several Midwestern newspapers.
