Finding a New Illinois History

After eight years as book review editor for this journal, I thought I would share some thoughts on the review process for a midwestern state historical journal especially in relation to the newfound interest in midwestern history. Finding a New Midwestern History, edited by Jon K. Lauck, Gleaves Whitney, and Joseph Hogan, a collection of recent scholarship on the region, provides a convenient framework to examine the nature of historiography regarding the state of Illinois in innovative and eclectic ways.1 This work along with others, such as Andrew R. L. Cayton and Susan E. Gray's The Identity of the American Midwest and Lauck's The Lost Region, represent a revival of Midwestern studies over the past dozen years that have contributed in part to the creation of the Midwestern History Association (MHA) in 2014 and its annual conferences.2 Many of the readers of this journal are aware of the ascendancy of midwestern historiography and interdisciplinary scholarship that is identifying, defining, and retelling the region's story. While the challenge of recent midwestern historical studies may significantly engage with the essential nature of the region, Illinois historiography on the surface seems simpler—the boundaries of the state from Indigenous inhabitation to the present. However, as I have discovered during my editorial tenure when searching for volumes to review that might best engage our readership in Illinois studies, the subject of the state is best defined broadly. Therefore, I would like to share a few comments on not only this important volume by Lauck, Whitney, and Hogan but also the impact of midwestern historical studies on the types of books reviewed by this journal over the past few years. Therefore, in the essay to follow, I will summarize the topics explored in Finding a New Midwestern History and then discuss how books reviewed in this journal over the past few years both reflect the relation of Illinois state history to the Midwest as a region and acknowledge the revived sense of Midwest regionalism as an analytical tool for state and local studies. Finding a New Midwestern History is divided into six sections. The first explores the Midwest as a region, including discussions of geography, environment, culture, and history. Section 2 highlights people of the Midwest. Sections 3 and 4 investigate the “iconic” Midwest and the region's diverse landscapes, respectively. Midwestern voices is the theme of section 5, which studies graphic arts, music, scholarship, and literature. The final section of the book treats the “Midwestern Experience” from different perspectives, including personal reflections as well as public biography. Though the volume is a collection of discrete scholarly articles, the editors have carefully woven them together to suggest not only a coherence to the theme of the Midwest as a region but also the complex and differentiated nature of that regional entity. This approach is significant for it not only informs a needed internalist focus on national history during a period of transnational scholarship but also allows state historical scholarship to place more local stories within a broader regional narrative, allowing for comparative perspectives as well as new analytical tools to study state, regional, and national histories.One of the most perplexing challenges to the new midwestern history is to define the region, which has been identified for MHA organizational and scholarly reasons as including the geographical area from the Old Northwest Territory to the Great Plains (i.e., roughly Ohio west through the Dakotas). In section 1, three articles explore regionality from quite different angles. Michael C. Steiner provides a highly informative introduction to the roots of midwestern regionalism through his focus on foundational figures such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Hamlin Garland, and Frederick Jackson Turner. In discussing nature and geography in the Midwest, James Davis shows how environmental factors shaped the region's settlement patterns and farmsteads. A particularly intriguing essay by Nicole Etcheson, especially for those of us hailing from Little Egypt, discusses the relationship between the lower Midwest and the citizens and cultures of those in states to the south, which has important implications for not only the history of race but also transregional perspectives.The section on Midwest Peoples contains four articles, which develop important themes in civic life, especially in relation to race and ethnicity. Susan Gray writes about Native Americans in midwestern history, demonstrating that the standard narrative for the Ohio River Valley needs to be expanded to the northern Great Lakes and trans-Mississippi areas. Along with Indigenous migrations, the mobility and experiences of foreign immigrants and native-born Black people are important parts of the midwestern experience. These are detailed by Gregory Rose's piece on nineteenth-century immigrants and Jeffrey Helgeson's analysis of the Great Migration and midwestern politics. Paula Nelson moves beyond politics to discuss associational and civic life in communities.An analysis of midwestern icons might seem problematic as well as contentious, but section 3 offers insights into the cultural nature of regionalism. John E. Miller's glimpse into small towns reminds the reader of the literary importance of regionalism by listing, among others, Mark Twain's Hannibal, Missouri; Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, and; John Mellencamp's Seymour, Indiana. Christopher R. Laingen moves from town to country to study the geography of the agrarian Midwest. By looking at sports history in the Midwest, especially in relation to other sections of the nation, David McMahon ascertains that the region offered important opportunities for athletic organization and participation for diverse communities.With increasing scholarly attention to the environment and human interaction with the natural world, a section on Midwestern landscapes is particularly engaging. As mentioned previously, one of the potential challenges to codifying the Midwest as a region is geography, which, as anyone traveling from Youngstown, Ohio, to Williston, North Dakota, for example, might attest. However, landscapes—whether natural or manufactured—may be malleable in relation to the people who envision and then interact with them. Without seashores or oceanic coasts, rivers played a vital role in the development of the region's landscape, as Michael Allen demonstrates in his study of how these waterways helped define midwestern cultures for both Indigenous people as well as settlers. While rivers and the Great Lakes were key players in the urban development of the region, Jon Teaford skillfully delineates the various factors, including transportation and commerce, that affected midwestern urban development, including the rise and fall of certain cities. Jon Butler moves beyond the spatial to the spiritual to characterize various regional religious movements, including the Latter-Day Saints, Church of God, and the Baháʼí.Part 5 of the book is neatly organized into art, scholarship, music, and literature. Zachary Michael Jack studies the role of regional muralists and artists, while James Seaton discusses regional intellectuals as select figures who opined in contrast to the “coastal consensus” that may have prevailed among the national intelligentsia. (p. xix) Music has proven to be a very serviceable category for historians interested in transregional and even transnational histories, and James P. Leary proves this to be the case in his survey of diverse regional musical traditions. From Mark Twain to Garrison Keillor, midwestern literary voices have resonated with a national readership, and David Pichaske surveys the many different approaches regional writers have taken in articulating midwestern themes.The final section of the work deals with “Voices” and is the most eclectic in its choice of topics. Having recently read a work on James Madison and nationalism, I can more greatly appreciate Gleaves Whitney's argument that the upper Midwest was an essential part of the foundational figures’ visions for the future of the young republic. The other three articles explore the seeming complexities and contradictions of midwestern life. Hank Meijer examines the political evolution of Michigander Arthur Vandenberg, whose globalism seemed as rooted in midwestern experiences as was his colleague Ohioan Robert Taft's isolationism. Continuing this theme of contradictions, J. L. Anderson juxtaposes “conformity” and “cosmopolitanism” in relation to midwestern values, especially in an age of rapid transit and high levels of mobility. While not providing any final answers to these contradictions, Pamela Riney-Kehrberg's essay “Growing Up Midwestern” reveals that the diversity of regional upbringings from family farm to global metropolis is too layered to be definitive; instead, it is contingent on a variety of factors that change according to time and place. How then might the revival of midwestern regional history connect with us in the Prairie State? How does the focus of the scholarly journal of the preeminent organization studying the state history of Illinois connect with a broad regional historiography? And, if such connectivity is indeed warranted, what may be the logical relationship between our state history and that of not only neighbors such as Iowa and Indiana but also geographically distant places like Nebraska and North Dakota? Finally, if we accept the applicability of a revival of midwestern regional history to the study of the past experiences and peoples of our own state, what does that scholarly “turn” mean for future studies of Illinois? To begin to answer such queries, I turn to reviews of select works over the past eight years that suggest how our state and its history intersect with broader regional and topical historiographical themes. For the sake of continuity, I will discuss these reviewed works in relation to the organization of Finding a New Midwestern History: region, peoples, icons, landscapes, voices, and experience.A part of the process of defining regionalism in the American historical tradition began with Frederick Jackson Turner's celebrated discussion of the frontier at Chicago's Great Columbian Exposition of 1893 and has been reinterpreted by artists, musicians, writers, intellectuals, and scholars ever since. Jon Lauck's advocacy for a new midwestern historiography first came to the notice of this journal in 2014 with a follow-up reexamination five years later. Western Illinois University historian Greg Hall reviewed Lauck's The Lost Region in 2014.3 A careful review of midwestern historiography and advocacy for renewed attention to the region, the book provides needed insight into the “Prairie Historians” and the role of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association (precursor to today's Organization of American Historians) in cultivating midwestern studies, as well, as Hall notes, a call for contemporary scholars to restore the region to the national narrative. Five years later, English professor and student of midwestern abolitionism Jeannie McDonald reviewed Lauck's next book, From Warm Center to Ragged Edge: The Erosion of Midwestern Regionalism, 1920–1965.4 In this work, Lauck moves beyond appeals for a revival to a critical assessment of the processes by which midwestern regional studies declined near the mid-twentieth century. While McDonald gently questions Lauck's longitudinal view of midwestern scholarly vibrancy, she does praise his discussion of eastern intellectual presumptuousness and disdain for the more western region. There are, however, several other ways to define the region, including via the role Illinois plays in it. Transportation is one, and this journal has examined the role of the state as not only a regional but national hub, particularly in maritime, rail, and road transport. Historic Route 66, officially designated the pathway from Chicago to Los Angeles in 1926, is beautifully captured in Jim Ross's Route 66 Crossings: Historical Bridges of the Mother Road, a photographic survey of engineering, architecture, and landscapes of the region.5 Reviewer Paul Edleman, a political scientist and accomplished amateur photographer, discusses the organization of the book by geography and bridge type, suggesting not only the continuity of the roadway but regional differentiation as the highway stretched from its midwestern origins to the Pacific Coast.6 A more traditional way to examine Illinois and its relation to the Midwest may be found in monographs, such as Kristopher Maulden's The Federalist Frontier: Settle Politics in the Old Northwest.7 Early Americanist historian Amy Godfrey Powers discusses the author's acute analysis of early political struggles as the territories of the Old Northwest evolved into state governments, which represented a unique development in early national politics.8 Envisioning the vital role of trans-Appalachian territories in the formative years of the Republic, especially Illinois's role as a contested area for partisan politics and ideology, provides a fertile area for state and regional studies.Beyond the notion of regionality is peoplehood, and Illinois shares with its neighbors in the region a highly diverse demographic profile that studies of race and ethnicity—particularly regarding mobility and migration—find especially fecund. Recently, Todd Carr, ISHS board member, reviewed Jason Colavito's The Mound Builder Myth: Fake History and the Hunt for a “Lost White Race.”9As anyone who has traveled to Cahokia knows, the landscapes and heritage of the “Mound Builders” are stunning and attest to the organizational and engineering capabilities of the Mississippian these Indigenous not only contested territories but also contested which, as Indigenous peoples were from midwestern scholarship to Illinois and the Midwest were contested with to not only settlement but also and on an area west of on the The in the and attention in our journal of not only the of state over from through but also to the regional over the of McDonald in review that provides of how local and may insights into personal stories of the past and that such is an important part of our regional and state historical recent works on immigrants to the Midwest and Illinois have been in this journal, including those on and K. reviewed on the by Zachary works the applicability of as well as to regional highlights not only the author's on the but also the and of midwestern immigrants in the century. professor of American and at the University of Illinois at reviewed a different history of more on of life, and in Michael The Great Migration to Chicago on Chicago during the first of the a for and comparative studies of and politics the and are of midwestern certain may as “iconic” and Illinois has its share of such who have state and even regional the most historical as by the of my tenure as book review this journal has reviewed books to the four a of which came from Illinois ISHS reviewed one of these works in that of insight into not only as a human but also as a political that demonstrates that represented the of both his and his of and political While might have found the new or even those at in and Illinois would have its regional the with broader regional and national and and the for shows the role of such as in the Many of these which was not in the region, especially the lower Midwest of Ohio, and such as that along the Mississippi River Illinois and along with figures in the national over and its the of the period through to the to settlement on the of Chicago when she the in historian reviewed a particularly book on the by and on the intellectual and political applicability of thought and work that was very with themes of from both to and from the of the University of Chicago to the of Gregory L. a review essay on other Chicago from in the century. the essay on and that the works a in Chicago's significantly of a which to challenge local politics through These of urban particularly to the of the of and race were not in Chicago but the urban the Midwest is for its and the and diverse landscapes of the region are also part of Five works reviewed in recent years suggest how midwestern landscapes intersect with Illinois historical studies. The family of has been the most for many of the midwestern The of this journal reviews of volumes discussing farm life in Illinois and the on the and Allen The of and Though on these works from and of on and to personal on an Illinois family The diversity of these topics to the complex and nature of midwestern not only in and cultural but also with to important is in Anderson's The Midwest Reviewer Jon Lauck that the work highlights the theme of of change that both farm and in the region have over the past few As is highly on natural it sense that this journal has also at review of The Chicago River to the that waterways have played in the state and region in the of a work not only the geography and of the Chicago but also the human impact of development, and public into the of advocacy for For a region with such waterways as the Ohio, and such works are especially There are, in landscapes that are and such is by in Chicago reviewed by University professor Mark While the as one of and the of Chicago's and focus on arts, and is eclectic and how the and its broader region helped define from the and of what the a to a variety of works reviewed to reflect the themes of Illinois and midwestern regional from the farm to the K. reviewed by historian to the agrarian Midwest by on the organizational nature of farm development early in the and the the author's analysis of subject through a As to previously, in have in Illinois and the Midwest particularly in recent years. In and and historian L. the at contemporary farm life from the of midwestern both continuity and change in family life and but in several ways and from and agrarian Illinois and the Midwest are urban the Midwest, especially with has some significant in the urban environment with significant for Illinois has such with in and at of the at the of the state, played a role in state and regional transportation and as an of for Black from the to the Midwest. in the part of the state, from as well, and was the for those during the Great however, the of both have in with and regional and Chicago into a and cultural volumes reviewed by this journal the voices from those cities. reviewed in Black and in the and of the town by on the organization and of the local While were not in the the local Black opportunities for and in Chicago in the young also the and of in however, the and politics of urban as well as family and personal life to and in diverse including via work, and public In a review of in I that the journal was the of scholarly work, with the to American life and a of highly of national it seemed an to at the life of a who an professor how the readers into the history of and then through the years of a Black life in Chicago and political life in Illinois with the needs of a young icons, landscapes, and to the Illinois and midwestern For this final section of for Illinois history and its relation to the Midwest Region, I would like to quite different books that both what I the best the of human while on the personal experiences to of for of the history of Chicago is an in of music, and professor in his review the of the in and in the of and of the of race and in the urban Chicago sports at of explores in Illinois in book and part history, the evolution of the from a of in to state four years later. the of the change that to American and important in American life that were place in and in the Midwest, and the Reviewer E. history professor at Illinois while that books of this nature are not reviewed in scholarly states that work shows in its of the of and While discussing how these young and the notes, carefully how were also very personal work, and sports experiences at young By stories and these works to the nature of human that history may best in these stories may for those to and in or or high in or book reviews for this journal from to I the challenges as my at other reviews to and to the and however, I also discovered the and to define my subject I was especially by the opportunities that our state history which even more when I the of the region of the in which our state Indigenous history and Mississippian are at to helped the to while and with and its role in the and future The Chicago Illinois and people and into and of the state, defining its and and the state a of national political while and it a in national politics through the century. music, the Black architecture, and the attest to the cultural a in which to a as recent historiographical historical are contingent on a of factors, including and and cultural Therefore, if the Organization of American in the helped the Americanist in transnational this the revival of Midwestern regional studies and historiography may us envision Illinois history in new and broader studies of Chicago may connect with those of and the and history provides a many opportunities for comparative studies for family life, and of and broader of political and a broad one that has to with the of and demographic The increasing of midwestern states between urban and is an especially important area of particularly in of contemporary in relation to patterns of and this highly review of historiography to the state of Illinois in with the revival of studies of the Midwest will us in our state history and its scholarship to a and more

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• Research Articles in Illinois History, 2010–2022

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