Keystone XL, Populist Party featured in winter Great Plains Quarterly

            The winter issue of Great Plains Quarterly is available via the University of Nebraska Press and, for the first time, online via Project MUSE, a leading provider of digital humanities and social sciences content. Volume 34, No. 1 of Great Plains Quarterly is the journal's first issue available through the project's database.

            This issue includes the first Great Plains Quarterly Invited Essay, a new feature of the journal devoted to raising contemporary, important and sometimes controversial questions related to scholarship and life on the Great Plains. In "Civilization of Oil," Lon Appleby, an instructor at Durham College in Oshawa, Ontario, tackles a contentious topic, the Keystone XL pipeline. Using a global perspective, Appleby reveals how the next generation views the use and transportation of oil production, and shows why we need to listen to their concerns.

            Led by three men from Nebraska, the short-lived Populist Party takes center stage in David Lee Amstutz's article, "A Populist Approach to Foreign Policy." Amstuzt discusses how the Spanish-American War, the South African War, and the Indian famine of 1899-1901 became focal points for American foreign policy and put the Populist Party's ideas to the test.

            Rebekah Crowe reveals the incredible but true story of land speculator and businessman extraordinaire George Francis Train in "A Madman and a Visionary." From his promotion of the Union Pacific Railroad across Nebraska to his attempts to create Columbus, Neb., as "the future capital of America," Train's legacy may only be overshadowed by his larger-than-life personality.

            Louise Siddons explores the similarities and differences of two Great Plains artists, Jacques Hans Gallrein and Doel Reed, in "Finding Their Place." Siddons examines how each man's regionalist vision propelled his career and inspired artists and admirers throughout America.

            Also included is a book review essay about perspectives on Native American film art, and numerous book reviews on topics including same-sex desire in the Rocky Mountain fur trade, and the growth of Kansas City from 1822-2011.

            Great Plains Quarterly is an academic journal published by the Center for Great Plains Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The issue is available via the University of Nebraska Press, http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu, as an individual copy or as a subscription or online via Project MUSE through university libraries, http://muse.jhu.edu.

Writer: Katie Nieland