Notes and News

Call for Papers

The forty-ninth annual Dakota Conference on Northern Plains History, Literature, Art, and Archaeology will be held April 21–22, 2017, at Augustana College, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The conference theme is Religion and Spirituality in the Northern Plains: Observing the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation, and will examine the variety of religious expression in the Northern Plains, both historical and contemporary. Since early contact, Plains Indians have struggled to maintain aspects of their spiritual traditions. Today the pipe ceremony, vision quest, sweat lodge, and peyotism continue to be practiced by Native Americans in the Northern Plains. Euro-American settlement of the Northern Plains brought religions as Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism. Varying degrees of spiritual emphasis, such as fundamentalism, evangelicalism, utopianism, pietism, and dispensationalism, are also present in the Plains. The Mormon Pioneer Trail passed directly through Nebraska, and Mormonism is practiced throughout the Plains. Hutterites maintain several colonies. The diversity of religious practices in the Plains continues apace, with adherents of such eastern religions as Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Submissions should include title, brief description, biographical sketch, and full contact information, and be sent to dakotaconference@augie.edu or, by mail, to “Dakota Conference,” The Center for Western Studies, Augustana University, 2001 South Summit Avenue, Sioux Falls, sd 57197. Proposals are due on or before February 10, 2017. Additional information may be found at http://www.augie.edu/dakota-conference.

Call for Entries: Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize

Each year the Center for Great Plains Studies presents a prize for the previous year’s best book on the Great Plains. The Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize carries a cash award of $10,000. Publishers or authors may make nominations; each publisher may submit up to five titles. Only first-edition, full-length nonfiction books copyrighted in 2016 are eligible. Recent winners of the Stubbendieck Prize include Metis and the Medicine Line: Creating a Border and Dividing a People (Michel Hogue); Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People (Elizabeth Fenn); Architecture of Saskatchewan: A Visual Journey, 1930–2011 (Bernard Flaman); and Blackfoot Redemption: A Blood Indian’s Story of Murder, Confinement, and Imperfect Justice (William Farr). For additional information, visit www.unl.edu/plains.

Resident Fellowships

The Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming, invites proposals for its Resident Fellowship Program. Fellowships are intended to fund research advancing knowledge, understanding, and passion about the cultural and natural heritage of the American West and its global relevance. Fellows will be granted a stipend based on their submitted budget and the availability of funding, not to exceed $5,000. Fellows may conduct archival and artifactual research among the collections of the Center’s five museums (Buffalo Bill, Cody Firearms, Draper Natural History, Plains Indian, and Whitney Western Art) and McCracken Research Library. Fellows may also pursue field research within northern Wyoming and the Greater Yellowstone region. Research and collection strengths at the Center include but are not limited to western art and art history; Plains Indian art and cultures; Greater Yellowstone ecology, conservation, and wildlife management; firearms history and technology; western history and the life and times of William F. Cody. Some recent topics researched include “Buffalo Bill and the Mormons,” “Arab Performers in the Wild West Show,” and “Return of the Pte Oyate (Buffalo People): A Peoples’ History of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation.” For more information, please visit the Center’s website at http://centerofthewest.org or contact John C. Rumm, PhD, Director of the Center’s Curatorial Division, at johnr@centerofthewest.org.