Notes and News

Call for Papers

The fiftieth annual Western Literature Association conference will be held October 14–17, 2015, in Reno, Nevada. Conference panels and plenary events will focus on tourism, mountaineering and river- running literature, the New Western suburbs, mining and emigration narratives, visual culture, and environmental politics, art and photography, among other topics relevant to Western literature. Additional information about the conference can be found at WLAConference@gmail.com. The program planners for the 2015 conference are David Fenimor, University of Nevada, Reno, fenimore@unr.edu, and Susan Bernardin, State University of New York, Oneonta, susan.bernardin@oneonta.edu.

New Journal: Middle West Review

Middle West Review is a new interdisciplinary journal about the American Midwest. It provides another forum for scholars and non-scholars to explore the meanings of midwestern identity, history, geography, society, culture, and politics. What states belong within the Midwest? Is the Midwest inherently rural? Are Chicago and Pacific Junction, Iowa, part of the same region? If so, what links them? What traditions or features define the Midwest? Does the Midwest have a particular economic identity? Middle West Review seeks to examine these and other questions related to the study of the American Midwest. For submission instructions, you may contact editor-in-chief Paul Mokrzycki, doctoral student in the History Department at the University of Iowa, uimiddle@gmail.com.