New Approaches to Midwestern Studies

New Approaches to Midwestern Studies broadens conventional understandings of the nation’s middle region, publishing scholarship that moves the field in new directions. The series explores regionalism and regional problems through interdisciplinary, comparative, transnational, and traditional methodologies, fostering research that considers perceptions of the Midwest as well as the influence of a unique midwestern culture and history on the nation and the region’s residents.

Editor(s)

Brian Schoen
Ohio University
Jon K. Lauck
University of South Dakota

Settling Ohio
First Peoples and Beyond
Edited by Timothy G. Anderson and Brian Schoen
· Foreword by M. Duane Nellis
· Afterword by Glenna J. Wallace

Scholars working in archaeology, education, history, geography, and politics tell a nuanced story about the people and dynamics that reshaped this region and determined who would control it. This volume retells a worn story as one of contested spaces, competing visions of nationhood, and complicated relations with Native American peoples.

The Saints and the State
The Mormon Troubles in Illinois
By James Simeone

James Simeone’s case study uncovers in the 1846 expulsion of Mormons from Illinois an important object lesson for American democracy today, revealing the impossibility of state neutrality in the face of entrenched group beliefs and segregated settlement.

Peoples of the Inland Sea
Native Americans and Newcomers in the Great Lakes Region, 1600–1870
By David Andrew Nichols

David Andrew Nichols offers a fresh history of the Lakes peoples over nearly three centuries of rapid change. As the people themselves persisted, so did their customs, religions, and control over their destinies. Accessible and creative, this book is destined to become a classroom staple for Native American history.

American History · Native American History · North America · Native American Studies · Midwest · American History, Midwest

In Essentials, Unity
An Economic History of the Grange Movement
By Jenny Bourne
· Preface by Paul Finkelman

In In Essentials, Unity, Jenny Bourne presents a lively picture of a fraternal organization—the Patrons of Husbandry, or the Grange—devoted to improving the lot of small farmers but whose legacies extend far beyond agriculture, shaping the very notion of collective action and how it is deployed even today.

American History · 19th century · Economic History · American Civil War · Legal and Constitutional History · Food Studies · Midwest · American History, Midwest

Driven toward Madness
The Fugitive Slave Margaret Garner and Tragedy on the Ohio
By Nikki M. Taylor

Margaret Garner was a runaway slave who, when confronted with capture, slit the throat of her toddler daughter rather than have her face a life in slavery. Driven toward Madness probes slavery’s legacy of violence and trauma to capture her circumstances and her transformation from a murdering mother to an icon of tragedy and resistance.

American History · Slavery and Slave Trade · African American Studies · Legal and Constitutional History · 19th century · Women’s Studies · Ohio · History | African American · American History, Midwest