Missouri State University is a public university located in Springfield, Missouri, United States and founded in 1905. It is the state's second largest university, with an official enrollment of 21,059 in the Fall 2012 semester
This is an interdisciplinary course that introduces students to the study of the Ozarks through the arts, humanities, media, and social sciences. The course will explore such issues as regional heritage, cultural adaptation, and the survival of regional and cultural identity and folkways through comparison of Ozarks people and places with other cultural groups and regions.Course activities will engage participants in a variety of ways with the following objectives: Gain an understanding of the various ways of defining the Ozarks and acquire a basic understanding of the historical development of the Ozarks.Examine concepts such as cultural identity, cultural assumptions, and subcultural persistence.Become familiar with a variety of cultural expressions of the people of the Ozarks, including regional literature, art, music, and architecture.Develop an understanding of the values common to residents of the Ozarks, past and present, through the study of religious, political, and economic characteristics of the region.Acquire an understanding of the interplay of tradition and modernization in the Ozarks and the impact of market capitalism, industrialization, and modern technological developments.Gain an appreciation for the geographical, socioeconomic, and racial diversity of the Ozarks, past and present.Develop an ability to compare the Ozarks with other regional cultures, nationally and internationally, and with mainstream American culture.
This course explores the history of Missouri during the Civil War era. It begins with three controversies that resulted from slavery’s expansion into the trans-Mississippi West—the Missouri Compromise, “Bleeding Kansas,” and the Dred Scott ruling—and uses them to explain how Missouri often stood as a flashpoint of national politics. Time and again, Missouri stood near the middle of sectional disputes over the future of slavery and liberty.A fiercely contested border state, Missouri was caught between not only the North and South but also the East and West. Like its neighbor, Kentucky, it was a slaveholding state that remained within the Union. Federal troops established a tenuous hold upon the state by the second year of the Civil War, yet they struggled to contain the irregular warfare that consumed much of Missouri. To maintain order within this divided society, Union leaders imposed martial law, loyalty oaths, and other increasingly stringent tactics. In addition, the eventual embrace of emancipation by federal troops and Radical Unionists showed how “hard war” came to the trans-Mississippi West years before it struck the Deep South.Wracked by bitter internal divisions, Missouri also suffered the worst guerrilla violence of the entire Civil War. Much of the course will examine this singularly devastating experience. As Union forces proved unable to defeat or expel pro-Confederate guerrillas from the state, federal commanders shifted their focus toward the civilians - many of them female - who fed, clothed, and sheltered these irregular fighters. This shift culminated in the 1863 execution of Order Number 11, which forcibly ejected several thousand civilians from four Missouri counties.The course concludes by assessing the Civil War’s legacies for freed people of color, defeated Confederates, and other Missourians. Looking to Reconstruction and the end of the nineteenth century, it reveals how Missouri illustrated both the promise and the limits of postwar reconciliation. Figures like Jesse James captured national attention but reflected the deep tensions that continued to grip Missouri. A string of films, from “True Grit” to “The Outlaw Josey Wales” and “Ride with the Devil,” suggests that the continued fascination with Missouri’s Civil War will persist into the twenty-first century.
Laura Ingalls Wilder’s novels have inspired generations of readers of all ages. Unlike most fiction for young readers published during the Great Depression, Wilder’s Little House books have never gone out of print. While they are uniquely American, they seem to cross cultural boundaries, and have been translated into dozens of languages, from German and French to Indonesian and Japanese.Yet Wilder’s work is also at the center of controversy. Who actually wrote the Little House series? How did Wilder’s personal life influence the direction and content of her fiction? Are the books a reliable and sensitive representation of the pioneer experience in the American West?This course is designed to explore these issues and more. It will expand your understanding of the literary themes, style, and historical underpinnings of Wilder’s Little House series. You’ll gain insight into complex issues at the heart of contemporary Wilder scholarship: the question of authorship; Wilder’s depiction of American Indians and the frontier; the ethical ambiguities underlying autobiographical fiction and memoir.At the end of this eight-week course, you’ll emerge with a clearer understanding of Wilder’s contribution to American children’s literature.
Caves, springs, disappearing streams and other curious features characterize much of the Missouri landscape. These features comprise a karst hydrological system that has formed many of Missouri’s natural wonders. Missouri’s karst, and indeed the karst that underlies approximately 20% of the land on Earth, is also very vulnerable to contamination and the impacts of humans. This course will explore Missouri’s caves and karst, describe how these hydrological systems form, and talk about how speleologists work to protect these valuable water resources.OBJECTIVESAt the end of this course, you’ll be able to:Define "karst".Describe how karst systems form.Explore (digitally) the cave systems of Missouri.Examine conservation efforts.