Faculty Publications
Books, Articles, and Other Materials Published or Accepted by Faculty (2010)
Click here to view annual lists of faculty publications from previous years
Recent Books by Faculty
Nellie Witt Spikes, edited by Geoff Cunfer, with foreword by Sandra Scofield
As a Farm Woman Thinks: Life and Land on the Texas High Plains, 1890–1960
Texas Tech University Press, 2010.
From the publisher:
In twenty-five years of syndicated columns in small-town Texas newspapers between 1930 and 1960, Nellie Witt Spikes described her life on the High Plains, harking back to earlier times and reminiscing about pioneer settlement, farm and small-town culture, women’s work, and the natural history of the flatlands and canyons. Spikes’s life spanned the arrival of Euro-American settlers, the transition from ranching to farming, the drought and dust storms of the 1930s, and the irrigation revolution of the 1940s. Engaging and eloquent, her “As a Farm Woman Thinks” columns today conjure up a vivid portrait of a bygone era.
Spikes’s best pieces, organized topically and then chronologically here by Geoff Cunfer, are illuminated by black-and-white historical photographs featuring people, landscapes, small towns, farms, and ranches that populated the caprock-and-canyon country of her West Texas. Cunfer’s introduction and editorial commentary provide context.
For historians, As a Farm Woman Thinks enlarges our understanding of a wide land and its culture. For the rest of us, Spikes’s “poetry of place” still captures the spirit of the Plains and, decades later, inspires imagination and memory.
For more information, visit the publisher’s website.Erika Dyck and Christopher Fletcher, eds.
Locating Health: Historical and Anthropological Investigations of Place and Health
Pickering and Chatto Publishers, 2010.
From the publisher:
Health and place are profoundly entwined in culture and over time. The experience of health is formed, nurtured, lived and denied in a surrounding environment. People everywhere seek out places that provide the right conditions for good health. The meanings attributed to health or illness are socially constructed, contested and shaped by powerful forces, providing an interesting arena for study.
The essays in this collection focus on the dynamic relationship between health and place. Historical and anthropological perspectives are presented, with each discipline having a long tradition of engaging with these concepts. Through diverse examples and perspectives, the resulting contributions offer new conceptual and methodological insights, enhancing both fields.
For more information, visit the publisher’s website.Keith Carson
The Power of Place, the Problem of Time: Aboriginal Identity and Historical Consciousness in the Cauldron of Colonialism
University of Toronto Press, 2010.
From the publisher:
The Indigenous communities of the Lower Fraser River, British Columbia (a group commonly called the Stó:lõ), have historical memories and senses of identity deriving from events, cultural practices, and kinship bonds that had been continuously adapting long before a non-Native visited the area directly. In The Power of Place, the Problem of Time, Keith Thor Carlson re-thinks the history of Native-newcomer relations from the unique perspective of a classically trained historian who has spent nearly two decades living, working, and talking with the Stó:lõ peoples.
Stó:lõ actions and reactions during colonialism were rooted in their pre-colonial experiences and customs, which coloured their responses to events such as smallpox outbreaks or the gold rush. Profiling tensions of gender and class within the community, Carlson emphasizes the elasticity of collective identity. A rich and complex history, Carlson's study looks to both the internal and the external factors which shaped a society during a time of great change and its implications extend far beyond the study region.
For more information, visit the publisher’s website.Bill Waiser (with C.S. Houston)
Tommy's Team: The People Behind the Douglas Years
Fifth House Publishers, 2010.
From the publisher:
In 2004, Tommy Douglas easily topped a CBC television poll as "The Greatest Canadian" because of his preeminent role in the introduction of medicare in the 1960s. But Tommy Douglas did not accomplish all that he did on his own. Regrettably, the people who helped make his accomplishments possible have been largely overlooked, forgotten, or simply ignored. Tommy's Team offers an unprecedented look at the people who played a significant, and often influential role in his path to become one of the most successful political leaders of his era. Tommy Douglas and his achievement have long been recognized. It is time to turn the spotlight on the people behind the stage and in the wings. This book is their curtain call.
For more information, visit the publisher’s website.
J.R. (Jim) Miller
Compact, Contract, Covenant: Aboriginal Treaty Making in Canada
University of Toronto Press, 2009.
From the publisher:
One of Canada's longest unresolved issues is the historical and present-day failure of the country's governments to recognize treaties made between Aboriginal peoples and the Crown. Compact, Contract, Covenant is renowned historian of Native-newcomer relations J.R. Miller's exploration and explanation of more than four centuries of treating-making. The first historical account of treaty-making in Canada, Miller untangles the complicated threads of treaties, pacts, and arrangements with the Hudson's Bay Company and the Crown, as well as modern treaties to provide a remarkably clear and comprehensive overview of this little-understood and vitally important relationship.
For more information, visit the publisher’s website.
Bill Waiser
Portraits of an Era: The Aerial Photography of Howdy McPhail
Fifth House Publishers, 2009.
From the publisher:
In this astounding collection of aerial photographs of farms, villages, and communities from Ontario to British Columbia in the 1950s and 1960s, historian Bill Waiser presents both the life and the photography of H. D. "Howdy" McPhail, a truly remarkable pilot who took aerial photography to the level of an art form. What really distinguishes Howdy's work is the simple artistry of each composition. His aerials are not in any sense generic, or for that matter, sterile. Even though he was both flying the plane and using a handheld camera, his photographs are amazingly sharp. He had a keen sense of the landscape and tried to capture the rhythm and patterns of daily life by including people and their activities in the scenes whenever possible.
For more information, visit the publisher’s website.
Erika Dyck
Psychedelic Psychiatry: LSD from Clinic to Campus
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
Erika Dyck's Psychedelic Psychiatry challenges some of the spectacular countercultural myths about LSD. In fact, LSD turns out to have been very much a Saskatchewan product. It was invented here when Saskatchewan's reputation as the North American home of universal health care--and the Tommy Douglas government's willingness to spend money on medical research--attracted scientists from Canada and abroad to this campus and to facilities around the province. The ultimate anti-establishment drug came about thanks to earnest and highly skilled medical researchers conducting well-funded research at the leading edge of psychopharmacology.
For more information, visit the publisher’s website.
Bill Waiser
Who Killed Jackie Bates?
Fifth House Publishers, 2008.
Short-listed for 3 Saskatchewan Book Awards, 2008.
From the publisher:
On the morning of 5 December 1933, a young RCMP constable discovered a grisly scene in the Avalon schoolyard in rural Saskatchewan. A young boy lay dead in a rented car, an apparent victim of carbon monoxide poisoning. In the car with him were his parents, who would survive both the effects of the gas and self-inflicted knife wounds only to face murder charges in their son's death. The subsequent trial of Ted and Rose Bates ranks as one of the most hotly debated in Saskatchewan history.
Waiser examines an incident long held up as an example of the sheer despair and bureaucratic heartlessness of the Depression and shows that the truth is much more complex. Through meticulous research, including letters, police and trial documents, contemporary accounts, and interviews with people who knew Ted, Rose, and Jackie, the author recreates the troubled lives and desperate times of Ted and Rose Bates in order to explain what led them to that isolated schoolyard on a cold December night. The words spoken throughout the book are taken verbatim from the sources and serve to reinforce that the Bates were not simply helpless victims of the Depression, but flawed people with complex personalities. Who Killed Jackie Bates? superbly recreates the Depression ethos to provide insight into a time and place that seem light years away from the Canada of today.
For more information, visit the publisher’s website.
