Reading for Comps on the Great Plains

My aim in writing, in teaching, and in directing graduate work on the Great Plains is to foster a scholarship of agency, complexity, and memory. Comprehensive exams in the history of the Great Plains deal with the historiography, or historical literature, of the region. I ask you, as a graduate student in this field, to read a list of titles in the history of the Great Plains and to reflect on their contributions toward a regional scholarship of agency, complexity, and memory.

Defining Terms

Agency is the capacity of people, as individuals and as groups, to make judgments and decisions. A historian of agency recognizes the importance of large and general forces, but does not treat them in deterministic fashion. Rather the historian of agency is interested in the judgments and choices that people make.

For instance, Walter P. Webb, author of The Great Plains, was an environmental determinist. In his view, the physical environment determined human culture. A historian of agency, on the other hand, recognizes the importance of environment on the Great Plains, but gives his attention to how people respond to and interact with the environment.

Most of the serious historical writing about the Great Plains has been deterministic in approach. Since the 1980s, however, agency has been a theme in the best regional historical writing. The Contested Plains, by Elliot West, is an example of a work of History incorporating agency.

Because of the deterministic nature of most historical writing about the plains, the historian of agency is in the position of a revisionist. He is critical of the historical tradition, but at the same time is part of it.

Complexity is how agents—in history, people or groups of people—relate to one another in systems. Complex systems, such as the regional society of the Great Plains, comprise diverse agents who forge structures of order but also retain enough disorder to foster emergence, that is, new structures representing continuing adaptation.

Anyone possessing a passing familiarity with the historical literature of the Great Plains knows that adaptation is a key concept. The problem with most of the literature, however, is that it does not reckon with the open-ended imperative of complexity. Writers such as Webb see adaptation as an end, producing stability. Historians of complexity recognize that transition is a permanent condition; there is no end of history. They recognize, too, that agents and components cannot be isolated or quantified. Complex narrative is the way to approach understanding of the Great Plains.

Memory is one of those structures that emerge to provide order in life on the Great Plains. Memory, individual and collective, is what we study and what we produce as historians; Carl Becker famously defined History as “the memory of things said and done.” As self-conscious, professional historians, we strive to foster an honest, constructive, and adaptable collective memory of the Great Plains experience. As critics of the regional historical tradition, we consider how historical writers relate to collective memory and what effects they have upon it. The best historical writing on the plains engages the region’s collective memory and writes from it.

Reading for Comps

Here is the general scheme. In preparation for comps, I expect you to be particularly well versed in twenty works, more or less. You will have general knowledge of the field, sure, but be particularly prepared with respect to the twenty titles.

The twelve titles listed immediately below are a base list, a catalog of classics. To this, and in consultation with the second reader for your comps, we will add a few current and notable books in the field, along with a few works that provide conceptual grounding for your research. Why twelve titles? That's Lutheran upbringing for you. Here is the base list.

The Big 12 (Great Plains)
Cather, Willa	My Antonia	Cather is the greatest novelist of the Great Plains, and two books, O Pioneers and My Antonia, her best, are the ones that deal predominantly with the memory of her Nebraska girlhood.
Fite, Gilbert C.	The Farmer's Frontier	A survey of agricultural settlement in the 19^th century. Although situated in a series with Turnerian assumptions, Fite is largely a descriptive historian.
Hamalainen, Pekka	The Comanche Empire	Hamalainen takes agency in Indian history to its logical end, in the context of world systems theory.
Friesen, Gerald	The Canadian Prairies	The great consolidation of Canadian prairie history, examination of which reveals the differences in subject and interpretation from American works.
Kraenzel, Carl F.	The Great Plains in Transition	A rural sociologist with historical sensibilities, Kraenzel is one of the great extenders and updaters of the Webb thesis. A prophet, too; he sees what will unfold in the Great Plains of late 20^th century.
Osgood, Eugene W.	The Day of the Cattleman	Consider this a mainstream work in the Turnerian tradition, and enjoy its evocation of the era of open range.
Riley, Glenda	The Female Frontier	This work cuts the Webb thesis in half. Riley asks, was the “institutional fault line” really all that salient for women?
Robinson, Elwyn P.	History of North Dakota	Robinson sets out his famous “six themes,” a classic manifestation of multiple causation, in this state history, considered a model for its generation.
Sharp, Paul F.	Whoop-Up Country	Sharp pioneered the international study of the North American plains with this well-conceived, beautifully written comparative work.
Stegner, Wallace P.	Wolf Willow	Stegner’s faux-memoir asserts powerfully melancholy themes of the post-frontier plains: the closing of a frontier that was futile to begin with, the failure to come to grips with the land, the sad state of village life, and the mother of all father complexes.
Webb, Walter P.	The Great Plains	Webb stands at the headwaters of regional historiography. Much of what lies downstream was written in support, refutation, or qualification. Understand Webb’s main thesis, yes, but also look for the subtexts.
West, Elliot	The Contested Plains	Another great book to show what happens when you recognize agency among a complexity of actors, including Indians—in this case, the Cheyenne.

There are certain works that, while not focused on the Great Plains, are important to the intellectual terms and lenses I apply to regional historiography. In our discussions of the literature of the plains, I likely will make mention of other, broader works such as the ones below.

Gaddis, Lewis	The Landscape of History	The 21^st century’s best philosopher of History in the English language, Gaddis incorporates key insights of complexity theory.
Anderson, Benedict	Imagined Communities	This work, with its rambling and brilliant explanation of nationalism, has strong application also to regional identities.
Dorman, Robert L.	Revolt of the Provinces	Dorman enlightens the work of regionalists such as Webb and Cather by exposing their motives—to save the country by bolstering regional cultures.
McNeill, William	Mythistory and Other Essays	McNeill’s essays are fundamental to understanding the relationship between narrative and identity.
Carr, E.H.	What Is History	If you want to do the philosophy of History, start here.
Glassberg, David	Sense of History	Fundamental to understanding the importance of History to the sense of place, as well as the relationship between public history and the academy.
To be continued. . . .

Preparing for Comps

There are three media by which your knowledge of your comps list should take shape.

1. Reading parcel to your course work. As you read for seminars and other courses, see if you can incorporate works from your comps list, discuss them, and write about them in your reviews and papers.

2. Extracurricular readings and discussions. You will complete your reading of the list, and we will talk about the books over coffee, in the office, walking across campus, driving across the country. A routine fixture to keep this process going is Comps Coffee, a gathering of graduate students convened regularly in a local coffee shop.

3. Consolidation through written dialog. What you have read, written, and discussed will be made of record in the Comps Central workspace area of my Central Desktop account. (Central Desktop is an online project management program that I use for various cooperative projects, including preparation for comps.) At the appropriate time, you will be invited to join the Comps Central workspace.

Catalog of Comp Questions

Presented here is a selection of comp questions I have used in the past.

· The ideas of frontier historian Frederick Jackson Turner have been influential in the interpretation of the history of the Frontier, the West, and the Great Plains. Consider his ideas both upstream and downstream, that is, discuss on the one hand their origins, and on the other the impact and critique of them. In the end, answer the question, Do the ideas of Turner, as he conceived them, retain applicability and pertinence?

· At the headwaters of historical writing about the Great Plains is Walter P. Webb’s The Great Plains, 1931. Ever since its publication, an array of scholars has sought self-consciously to qualify, extend, reject, or revise his basic thesis. What are some significant works along these lines? What important theses or ideas emerge from them?

· What makes a great work of History, anyway? What makes you say, on completing a reading and setting the book down, “That was a great book?” Consider the criteria you would apply, and then, reflecting on your readings for this exam, apply them. What are the great books in the catalog (maybe four or five)? And what makes them great?

· The Forty-Ninth Parallel divides western North America between two nations. In the construction of a Great Plains historiography, does the border make a difference?

· In the past two decades the concept of public memory has become a chestnut among historians in both Europe and the United States. Michael Kammen is the historian best known for introducing this line of thought into American historical writing. Can you apply the concept of public memory to the historical writing of the plains? In such historical literature, where does the construction of public memory begin? How does it evolve?

· In shaping the historical narrative of a region, historians induce interpretations and themes, they propose them, and if other scholars find they have explanatory power, the interpretations and themes become accepted standards. North Dakota’s Elwyn Robinson was one of those regional historians who set forth themes—six of them, in his case. Try out his themes in the literature you have read for this field. How much explanatory power do they have? And if you were to add a theme in the regional history of the Great Plains, or replace one, what one would you add?

· Homesteading is an old and standard subject of inquiry in the history of the Great Plains. Inject the considerations of memory and identity such as have been developed by historians in the past several decades, however, and the old subject appears lively again. What is the memory of homesteading that emerges from the extant historical writing on the subject? How might that remembrance be revised through critical reading and new research?

· Walter Webb is notorious for his general neglect of, and quaint stereotypes of, women on the plains—but then, is he so different from others in the main stream of regional historical writing? Discuss the insertion and integration of women’s lives in the historiography of the Great Plains. And based on your studies, do you see any promising new lines of work to be done?

· Something odd has happened in American historical writing over the past three decades. Whereas previous scholars (in line with Tocqueville’s characterization of democratic historians) viewed most people as subject to broad, deterministic forces, and perhaps even victims of such forces, more and more historians have come to emphasize survival, persistence, and action—the complex of things we call “agency”—on the part of people previously presumed to have been powerless. Based on your reading and research, what is the importance of this movement toward agency in History?

· Among the traditionally underrepresented groups in rural history is women. Let us consider the representation of women in the literature. Pick five works from your reading list and consider, in relation to each, the following questions: To what extent are women present in the work? What is their sphere in the work? And to what extent to they exhibit agency?

The Wizard / Tom Isern