The Center for Great Plains Studies at the University of Nebraska has announced the finalists for this year’s Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize.
The three books selected by a panel of judges are: “Architecture of Saskatchewan: A Visual Journey, 1930-2011,” with text by Bernard Flaman (Canadian Plains Research Center Press); “Encounter on the Great Plains: Scandinavian Settlers and Dispossession of Dakota Indians, 1890-1930,” by Karen V. Hansen (Oxford University Press); and “The Red and the White: A Family Saga of the American West,” by Andrew R. Graybill (Liveright/Norton Publishing).
In “Architecture of Saskatchewan,” Flaman takes readers through a visual chronicle of building styles in the Canadian prairie province. The book picks up chronologically where a previous book, “Historic Architecture of Saskatchewan” (1986), left off and explores the art deco, streamline moderne and modernist styles of the 1930s to present day styles using vibrant photography and text. Flaman is a conservation architect for Canada’s Public Works and Government Services. He also co-curated the 2004 exhibition, “Character and Controversy at the Mendel Art Gallery,” which examined modernist architecture in Saskatchewan.
In “The Red and the White,” Graybill reveals a complex history of native-white intermarriage in the 19th- and early 20th-century American West, as seen through the experiences of a single family. He pays particular attention to the mixed-blood children of such unions, who were contemptuously dismissed in their own time and often since as “half-breeds.” Graybill is also the author of “Policing the Great Plains: Rangers, Mounties, and the North American Frontier, 1875-1910.” He is associate professor of history and director of the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
In “Encounter on the Great Plains,” Hansen draws upon 15 years of archival research and 130 oral histories to explore issues of co-existence between settlers and Indians through details about people’s lives and community events. The book investigates how both Dakotas and Scandinavians resisted assimilation and fought attacks on their individual cultures. Hansen is also the editor of a recent anthology, “At the Heart of Work and Family: Engaging the Ideas of Arlie Hochschild.” He is a professor of sociology and women’s and gender studies at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.
“The Distinguished Book Prize celebrates the most outstanding scholarship about the Great Plains during the past year. Choosing just one winner is always difficult for the judges, because, as all three finalists demonstrate, there is a lot of terrific work being done,” said Rick Edwards, director of the Center for Great Plains Studies.
The winner of the $5,000 cash prize will be announced April 26. The author will be invited to travel to UNL to present a lecture on the topic of the book. Only first-edition, full-length, nonfiction books published and copyrighted in 2013 were evaluated for the award. Nominations were made by publishers or authors.
The Center for Great Plains Studies is an intercollegiate regional research and teaching program. Its mission is to promote a greater understanding of the people, culture, history and environment of the Great Plains through a variety of research, teaching and outreach programs. Visit http://www.unl.edu/plains for more information.
