News & Notes

Frederick C. Luebke Award

We are pleased to announce that the 2016 Frederick C. Luebke Award for outstanding regional scholarship has been awarded to Rachel Wolters for her essay “As Migrants and as Immigrants: African Americans Search for Land and Liberty in the Great Plains, 1890–1912” (Fall 2015, Vol. 35, No. 4). The essay examines the forces that drove African Americans from the US American South to Oklahoma and then onward to Canada in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Luebke Award, named for the founder of the journal, is given each year for the best article published in Great Plains Quarterly. The Frederick C. Luebke Award includes a cash stipend of $250. Ms. Wolters is a graduate assistant in the Department of History at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

Postdoctoral Fellowships in the Study of the North American West

The Bill Lane Center for the American West, Stanford University (California), offers one-year and two-year postdoctoral fellowships in the study of the North American West. Recent PhDs in all disciplines of the humanities and sciences whose research concerns the western United States, western Canada, Mexico, and the Pacific World are eligible. While in residence at the Center, fellows pursue their own research. Fellows also work with faculty colleagues in developing Center research programs; organize academic events related to their area of research; and may teach an undergraduate course on a topic related to their research. Courses are offered in the department most appropriate to their disciplinary specialization. Interested scholars should send a cv and a letter of inquiry that describes their current research and their plans for the postdoctoral fellowship, both in pdf form, to Iris Hui, <irishui@stanford.edu>, Associate Director, Academic Affairs, Stanford University.

Call for Papers

The 2017 Great Plains Symposium will examine the topic “Flat Places, Deep Identities: Mapping Nebraska and the Great Plains.” Held in Lincoln, Nebraska, March 30–31, 2017, the symposium will commemorate the publication of the Atlas of the Great Plains (2011) and anticipate the publication of the Atlas of Nebraska (2017). Why are maps so fascinating? What do they tell us, what assumptions were necessary to construct them, how do they shape our knowledge? The symposium calls for a critical reexamination of maps and the mapping of the Great Plains, from earliest historical maps to present digital cartography and remote sensing, from Pawnee star charts to cadastral surveys. This topic is also to be understood figuratively, inviting us to consider the myriad ways in which “maps,” “mapping,” and “place” shape all aspects of how we see and understand the Great Plains. Thus included in our topic are questions of how place and mapping are used in or influence identity and culture, economy and society, agricultural practices, natural resources, environmental issues, business strategy, art and creative expression, literature of place, social relationships, politics and social movements, “deep mapping,” and any other ways in which concepts of mapping and place are revealing and useful. We invite proposals on any of these topics for paper presentations, roundtable discussions, workshops, chain-reaction panels, lightning-round sessions, or other formats. Papers accepted for presentation at the “Flat Places, Deep Identities” symposium will be considered for publication in thematic issues of Great Plains Quarterly or Great Plains Research. Proposals must be received electronically using this form by Friday, October 14, 2016. Visit <http://www.unl.edu/plains/2017-symposium> to download the 2017 abstract submission form.

WHA Conference

The Fifty-Seventh Annual Conference of the Western History Association (wha) will be held November 1–4, 2017, in San Diego, California. The theme of the conference is “Against the Grain,” and proposals are sought which seek to challenge old and new orthodoxies about western history. The 2017 Program also hopes to bridge the divide that has too often cut academic histories off from broader public conversations. The wha would like to spotlight projects that have successfully translated recent scholarship and effectively engaged wide audiences, and proposals are encouraged regarding pedagogical innovations that rethink how western history is taught to students at all levels. A wide range of formats are sought: panels, roundtables, workshops, and lightning rounds. No matter the...