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Great Books of the Great Plains,
2006: Childhood on the Prairies
Great Books of the Great PlainsTM, as
offered by Communiversity in 2006, features a series of three book
discussions focusing on childhood and coming of age on the Great
Plains. The first work under discussion, by Dorothy
Schwieder, recounts the author's girlhood in Presho, South Dakota.
Schwieder is a professional historian who remembers her roots and writes with
clear-eyed affection. The author of the second work, Pamela Riney-Kehrberg,
is likewise a historian; she offers a landmark study of the rural experience
of childhood in America.
The third author, Wallace Stegner, is a Pulitzer Prize winner and author of
the most-cited memoir of childhood on the plains. Discussion leaders Miles
Lewis and Jessica Clark are doctoral students specializing in rural and
regional history at North
Dakota State University; discussion leader and
course coordinator Tom Isern is Professor of History at NDSU.
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Date of
Discussion (Sunday)
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Book for
Discussion
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Discussion
Leader
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22 January 2006
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Schwieder, Growing Up with the Town
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Miles Lewis
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5 February 2006
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Riney-Kehrberg, Childhood on the Farm
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Jessica Clark
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19 February 2006
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Stegner, Wolf Willow
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Tom Isern
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The public is invited to take part in these three book
discussions. All programs convene on Sunday afternoon at 1:00. See information in the Communiversity
catalog (to be linked here when available). (Further information available
from Tom Isern.)
The Books
Schwieder, Dorothy Hubbard. Growing Up with the Town: Family and Community
on the Great Plains. University of Iowa
Press.
Riney-Kehrberg, Pamela. Childhood on the Farm: Work, Play, and Coming of
Age in the Midwest. University Press of Kansas.
Stegner, Wallace. Wolf Willow: A History, a Memoir, and a Story of the
Last Plains Frontier. Various editions.
All three books available for purchase at Zandbroz
Variety. Copies of Wolf Willow available for loan at no charge; pick
up at Zandbroz, return at discussion meeting.
The Discussion Leaders
Miles Lewis is
a Montana
boy, a Marine Corps veteran, a staff member of the NDSU Memorial Union, and a
PhD student in History at NDSU. His studies focus on the Great Plains, and
his dissertation is a history of the Musselshell country of central Montana.
Jessica Clark
is the Theresa Mack Fellow in Germans from Russia Studies, NDSU Libraries,
her main duty there being coordination and interviewing for the Dakota
Memories Oral History Project. Drawing on project materials, her dissertation
deals with childhood among the Germans from Russia.
Tom Isern,
Professor of History at NDSU, is a specialist in the history of the Great Plains. Both his most recent book, Dakota
Circle (Institute for Regional Studies), and his new CD, Candles at
Canaan (North Dakota Public Radio), focus on the folklife of the Great Plains. On several occasions he has led study
tours to Eastend, Saskatchewan, boyhood home of Wallace
Stegner, author of Wolf Willow.
Graduate Workshop
NDSU will offer a 1-credit hour graduate workshop
(HIST/EDUC 600) for teachers in parallel with the book discussion series.
Participants in the workshop will read the books, attend the discussion
sessions at the Zandbroz, and also participate in web-based discussions.
Further information will be linked here.
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