Introducing Southwest
Minnesota
Rural and Regional Studies 102-01
Room CH 225; Thursdays, 6:30-9 PM
This course was offered for credit or no-credit. It introduced
Marshall and the Southwest community to the region. Its form was
interdisciplinary, involving a wide array of diverse university
professors, community experts, and guest speakers. The course
utilized rural and regional writings and literature created by
university faculty and the Center for Rural and Regional Studies.
The core of the course, consisting of thirteen
classes, introduced Southwest Minnesota, its geography, environment,
history, demography, sociology, culture, and ethnicity. It featured
two Saturday field trips; an evening with local writers; and an
evening at the Lyon County Historical Society. One of the thirteen
classes was held in conjunction with a regional conference called
Rethinking Home.
Speaker, travel, conference, and other expenses
entailed in this course were in part supported by the Society
for the Study of Local and Regional History, Schwan's Sales Enterprises,
and the Minnesota Humanities Commission.
Contact Information:
PROFESSOR JOSEPH A. AMATO
ST 203A
TELEPHONE 537-6295
AMATOJ@SOUTHWESTMSU.EDU
Coordinators: Janet Timmerman, Jan Louwagie, and
Donata DeBruyckere
Office: ST 203B
Telephone: 537-6226, 537-7373
Books:
Radzilowski, J. Prairie Town: A History of Marshall, Minnesota
Amato, A., Timmerman, J., Amato, J., Draining the Great Oasis
Pichaske, D. and Amato, J. Southwest Minnesota: The Land and the
People
Amato, J. and Radzilowski, J. The Community of Strangers
Amato, J. Rethinking Home
Examinations and Projects:
Credits were given with the completion of one of two assignments:
the presentation of four book reviews of approximately five pages
in length or a single essay of twenty pages, integrating reading
and class materials. This paper must have offered a social, cultural,
and geographic definition of southwest Minnesota.
Thursday, August 29
Introduction: Defining forms and uses of geography. What is home?
Presenters: Dr. Joseph Amato and Janet Timmerman
Newcomers.
Guest Speaker.
Thank you.
Home
Characteristics-nest, start out from, familiar,
intimate, nurture body and mind, where mother is, return for safety.
Home vs house Age of Bonding with nature and humans
Invest self
Have insider knowledge "dialect of dialect"
First connections, family. First impressions of senses and emotions.
Familiar peoples and attitudes, actions, and postures. Familiar
landscape, human and natural. A reference point-emotions compass,
language sources, continual references. A place you are always
returning; you can never return.
Regional
Countryside as contrary (Can use "Calling farmers names"
)
-and explanation surrounding them and place in the curriculum.)
Ways to define places. On map (whose map and what
kind of map?) Place by natural elements and conditions-climate,
weather, vegetation (grasses, exotic)even animals, water, rock,
topography, or geologic history.
Also, define places by human activities-ports, agriculture, forestry,
or mining. Also, settlement, type of settlement village, town,
city, or metropolis, industrial, commercial, manufacturing center,
even degree of literacy-so many book publishers per capita. (head)
Also, density of settlement, rate of change, degree of isolation.
Degree even to which areas or zones are created by government
or commerce.
Interaction of nature and humans-corn, hogs.
Let us look as SW MN ask questions. Then use RH, pp 23-28 covering
following points, maps
Definition by geology, topography, vegetation, climate, water,
ethnicity, agriculture, settlement, density, settlement, size
and number of small towns, and size of families, ethnicity, economics,
growth or decline Read Amato's definition of Southwest Minnesota
and its location as a transitional zone of prairie, plains, midwest.
Rock-endurance, commemoration, and answer to time
vicissitudes. Rock-in names. Granite Falls. Rock county. Shapes.
Glacial boulders. Rivers. Rock picking. Above all else the Red
Rock
Thursday, September 5
Rocks and Waters
Guest Presenter: Professor Tom Dilley
Readings:
Introduction, pgs. xi-xix, Draining the Great Oasis(DGO)
Chapter 3: "Geology" pgs. 35-48, DGO
Chapter 5: "Wetlands" pgs. 63-74, DGO
Chapter 9 "The Red Rock, Inventing Peoples and Towns"
pgs. 143-167, Rethinking Home(RH)
"Picking Rock" pg. 33, Southwest Minnesota(SM)
Thursday, September 12
Landscape is profoundly changed. Senses, touches,
expectations, and fears continuously altered. Heart Surgery. The
man who takes his child across the ice.
Humans make and remake countryside. Contrast to wilderness.
Landscape is transformed in all ways. Sometime immediately and
abruptly, steady weather modification. Others invasion or intrusion,
cutting down the vineyards.
Indians transformed the landscape with fire. The power of the
borrowed horse-and how horse changes the landscape.
Agriculture-what is it? Choice of plants and search for fertiles
valleys. Energy in and energy out. Why a river valley. Need so
much food for calories. Need to save seed. Difference of plants
and grazing. Potato.
Illustrates power of the market. What is the market. Local versus
distant market.
Can use Indian and beaver.
Then use railroads whole new order of markets.
Business and economic cycles.
Alcohol-changing fields.
Then Milk Machines …. See notes above about Jorwerd
Land and Farms
Humans make and remake countryside. Reproduction.Potato Countryside
breathes in and out
Agriculture principal engine changing human relationship to nature.
Energy in and energy out. River valleys. Fresh soils. Choose plants.
Store foods. Domesticate animals. Divide between planting and
grazing. Extra calories permit humans (peasantry), sedentary,
specialization, and civilizations.
Greeks, Romans, and Arabs in Sicily in the Mediterranean-already
exchange of markets, importation of plants, economy developed
by distant markets, and also conform to technology and culture
of rulers.
Oxen and wheeled plough-and harness.
Fire, Beaver, and Horse. The power of the borrowed horse-and how
horse changes the landscape.
Industrial and Scientific Agriculture
Sc Ag alters just nature with new machines and chemicals, but
creates new populations, human labor, and power
Our fields are factories.
Distant and world markets
The railroads. Cities of the tracks.-names like
Florence, etc./ contrast river valley. Brings goods and peoples.
All belongs to markets.
Child of Chicago-one industry of many. Less child
of twin cities. Great regions or zones belong t dominant cities.
Hierarchy.
Crack the whip. Price of sugar at Renville.Price
of wheat-corn-pork bellies Midwest answe
The issue of world markets. Migrations from locality
to region to nation-coops.
The saving crop. soybean-oil. Value added. MCP/ADM
Agriculture becomes an object of policy. Government policies-to
shore up prices, set aside land, By transfer of taxes. Payments
to farmers. Government drives whole countryside-with redistribution
of wealth--
Sat, Sept, 14 Trip Murray County
Guest Presenters: Professor Geoff Cunfer and Dennis
Guse
Readings:
Chapter 2: "Crops and Land Use" pg. 21-34, DGO
Chapter 14: "Horse Ecology" pgs. 175-187, DGO
Chapter 9: "Native Prairie" pgs. 105-112, DGO
"The Grassroots of Great Plains History" pgs. 17-19,
SM
"Horizontal Grandeur" pgs. 27-29, SM
Saturday, September 14
Field trip through Murray and Lyon Counties
Guest Speakers: Richard Vanderziel, Cal and Sander Ludeman
---------
Readings:
Chapter 18: "Crazy Acres" pgs. 239-247, DGO
Chapter 17: "Hogville" pgs. 221-237, DGO
Chapter 11: "Draining the Great Oasis" pgs. 125-141,
DGO
Thursday, September 19
The Land and the Indigenous Peoples of Southwest Minnesota
Guest Speaker: Dr. Gary Clayton Anderson
Readings:
"On the Coteau des Prairies, 1838" pgs.21-25, SM
"First Peoples of Southwestern Minnesota" pgs.38-47,
SM
Other readings to be assigned.
Saturday, September 21
Field trip to Lincoln and Pipestone counties.
Guest Speakers: Hulda Hansen, Chris Roelfsema-Hummel, Richard
Bryan
Readings:
Review: "The Red Rock" RH
Thursday, September 26
Environment and Draining the Great Oasis
Guest Speaker: Professor Anthony Amato
Readings:
Chapter 1: "Wet and Dry Landscape" pgs. 1-20, DGO
"Rivers of the Coteau des Prairies" pgs.101-105, SM
Thursday, October 3
Conference: Rethinking Home
Room-CH 217
Readings:
Read rest of Rethinking Home.
Thursday, October 10
Settlement of the Region
Readings:
Chapter 3: "The Rule of the Market and the Law of the Land"
pgs. 43-59, RH
Introduction, pgs.xiv-xxii, Prairie Town (PT)
"Land of the Tall Grass" pgs. 1-9, PT
Chapter 2: "Railroad Town" pgs.11-29 PT
Thursday, October 17
(Class held at the Lyon County Historical Museum)
Marshall: A Lead City
Guest Presenters: Elayne Conyers, Director of the Lyon County
Museum, Regional Historian, John Radzilowski, and Community Services
Director, Harry Weilage.
Readings:
Read the rest of Prairie Town: A History of Marshall, Minnesota
Thursday, October 24
Demography and Towns
Guest Speaker: Dr. C. Paul Martin
Readings:
Read Community of Strangers
Chapter 10: "Business First and Last" pgs. 168-184,
RH
Thursday, October 31
Murder and Artichokes: The Dark Side of Local History
Readings:
Chapter 5: "Anger: Mapping the Emotional Landscape"
pgs.77-96, RH
Chapter 6: "The Clandestine" pgs. 97-112, RH
Chapter: 7: "Madness" pgs. 113-127, RH
Thursday, November 7
Ethnicity and New Minorities
Film: Belgians on the Land
Readings:
"Ethnicity and Settlement" pgs. 69-73, SM
Handouts
Thursday, November 14
Evening of Regional Writers
Hosted by Professor David Pichaske
Readings:
Chapter 8: "Madame Bovary and a Lilac Shirt" pgs.128-142
RH
Read rest of Southwest Minnesota: the Land and the People
Thursday, November 21
Defining Regions and Locales: Rethinking Home
Film: Death of a Dream
Readings: To be assigned
Thursday, November 28- Thanksgiving-No Class
