Fall issue of Great Plains Quarterly available

In the fall issue of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Great Plains Quarterly, researchers wrote about women homesteaders in Western Canada, the role of newspapers and railroads in the settlement of Nebraska, and the romantic travel accounts written by men in the 19th-century fur trade business.

In "'Daughters of British Blood' or 'Hordes of Men of Alien Race': The Homesteads-for-Women Campaign in Western Canada," Sarah Carter writes about the struggle by single Canadian women to acquire land for homesteading. "In both nations married women were prohibited from homesteading, but the Canadian land laws departed from the U.S. model in one important respect: single women were not eligible to homestead," writes Carter, University of Alberta history professor.

UNL College of Journalism and Mass Communications professors Charlyne Berens and Nancy Mitchell looked at railroads and newspapers in their article, "Parallel Tracks, Same Terminus: The Role of 19th-Century Newspapers and Railroads in the Settlement of Nebraska." Berens and Mitchell write, "Two key institutions led settlers into the new state: the railroads and the newspapers. The story of these two enterprises and their impact on the state gives readers insight into how much change has occurred in both railroads and newspapers since the pioneer days of the late 1800s."

In "'Rejoicing in the Beauties of Nature': The Image of the Western Landscape during the Fur Trade," independent scholar Kerry R. Oman looks at the writings by men who went west for the fur trade from the 1820s through the 1840s. Oman writes, "Their writings were more than mere travel accounts outlining directions traveled, trapping or trading activities, and encounters with grizzly bears and Blackfeet Indians. Often, they expressed aesthetic judgments about nature that created a romantic image of the West."

Great Plains Quarterly is published by the Center for Great Plains Studies at UNL. Current issues of the journal may be purchased in the Great Plains Art Museum gift shop at 1155 Q St., or by calling the center at (402) 472-3082. Order forms are available online at www.unl.edu/plains.