Introduction: A New Era at Middle West Review

The editors at Middle West Review are delighted to announce that we have moved into a beautiful office at the University of South Dakota. To be more precise, we will now be housed in office 215 in the historic Old Main building in the middle of the Vermillion campus. We want to extend our deep and sincere thanks to USD President Sheila Gestring and USD Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Kurt Hackemer for making this new home possible. We also thank them for funding the journal's graduate assistant, Lucas Lund, who will be with us throughout the year.

Middle West Review also wants to announce some important upcoming initiatives. The Fall 2020 issue will dive deeply into the questions of regionalism and the emergence of regional identity in the Midwest. The journal will publish a special symposium on these questions, which are crucial to the field of midwestern studies. The Spring 2021 issue will be focused on the centennial of the Great Migration. More specifically, it will examine the migration of African Americans out of the South and into smaller midwestern cities, which have been neglected by Great Migration scholars relative to large midwestern cities such as Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland. This special issue will be guest-edited by Brie Swenson Arnold, a professor of history at Coe College in Iowa. Middle West Review is also collecting proposals for a special issue on the Jewish Midwest. Preparations for this special issue are now being made and proposals and other inquiries are welcome.

We are also pleased to announce the addition of two new editors at Middle West Review. Beginning with this issue, MaryKat Parks Workinger will serve as an associate editor of the journal and Jennifer Kirsten Stinson will serve as the journal's book review editor. All of the editors of Middle West Review and many of the journal's board members will be present at the May 2020 Midwestern History Association conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which is once again going to be generously hosted by the Hauenstein Center at Grand Valley State University. Please be sure to check the journal's websites hosted by the University of South Dakota and the University of Nebraska Press for more information about the activities of the journal and other announcements. More generally, please help us to spread the word about the activities of Middle West Review and let your colleagues know that submissions are welcome.