Ozarks Studies

A ubiquitous aspect of Eastern Orthodox devotionalism is the inclusion of icon corners in the homes of adherents. This study draws on data from ethnographic interviews with members of the Theotokos Unexpected Joy Orthodox Church in Ash Grove, Missouri, in order to highlight how practitioners employ icons and other devotional items in their socio-religious lives. Focusing on the complex relationships formed among humans, celestial beings, and things, this thesis demonstrates the ways that icons function as forms of communication, players in social dramas, and identifiers for adopted ethnic identity. Church members’ vibrant and dynamic relationships and practices convey salient ideas about the nature of vernacular religion, the formation of group and individual identities, the commodification of ancient Christian practices via new technologies, and the relationships among humans, divine figures, and holy objects.

The shooting in 2014 at the Jewish community Center in Kansas City, galvanized the Springfield, Missouri community against anti-Semitism. However, the residents of both Lawrence County, Missouri, the next county to Greene that houses Springfield, and the town of Aurora, Missouri, where the murderer Frazier Glenn Miller lived, were far more concerned with their public image. This difference in approach by the communities to violent anti-Semitism has much to do with the diversity within these communities.

What is not often remembered in Ozarks’ history is the experimental Jewish commune in Newport, Arkansas. The Am Olam movement was founded in the later part of the 19th Century as a part of the emerging Russian socialist movement to combat Russian anti-Semitism and help Jews flee Czarist Russia. Am Olam’s leadership brought their people to the American Midwest to farm. The push for agriculture was a way to break the Jew as merchant and intellectual stereotype. The Newport colony was their second attempt at a communal farm and the second attempt to fail. Kate Herder, daughter of one of the founders of this movement, wrote a memoir when she was in her 70s about her experiences in Newport. Because she spoke no English, her connection to the Newport community was weak. Because she was not Christian or Western European, her understanding of and appreciation for the Ozarks culture was also minimal. These factors color her relationship with Newport community, but provide us with a wonderful outsider perspective. Despite the socialist nature of the commune, it was Judaism that bound the community together and this too is important to examine. Not released to the public until 1999, the portion of Herder’s memoir that is about her experience in the Ozarks presents a colorful view of life in a forgotten Ozarks community. This paper will examine how Herder describes the community’s connection with each other which, while feeling isolated in the Ozarks.

What happens when a sprightly divorcée school teacher writes a fan letter to a lonely, depressed novelist?  Will this improbable new muse somehow save his life and help him revive his career?

In this feature documentary sequel to "Stay More: The World of Donald Harington" (2013), Arkansawyer Donald Harington tells how the fateful letter from his future wife, Kim, helped inspire the “quirkiest, most original body of work in contemporary U. S. letters” (Boston Globe).  The course of true love never did run less smooth -- or more funny -- through creative (and rejected) marriage proposals, anniversary tricks, book collaborations, life-threatening illnesses, and a series of boldly and playfully experimental novels that pushed the boundaries of American literature.  Tampering eagerly with history (just never with fiction!), the Nabokov of the Ozarks spins a yarn worthy of his novels, his beloved Fate Thing peopling his own life with lovers and liars, despairs and delights that even he could hardly have dreamed up.  (100 minutes)

Throughout the twentieth century, many farm families in the Missouri Ozarks, USA, significantly changed their practices or abandoned agriculture as an occupation altogether. Researchers, farmers, and the general public assume the shift was an inevitable process of increasing economic efficiency. This article utilizes ethnoecology to demonstrate the importance of the overlooked cognitive aspects of agricultural modernization and to elucidate contemporary agricultural heterogeneity in the Ozark Mineral Area of southeast Missouri. Research included two years of participant observation, agro-ecosystem analysis, and ethno-ecological and semi-structured interviews to document Ozark farmers’ perceptions of their farming environments and their agroecological practices. While some farmers’ perceptions of their farming environments have changed with agricultural modernization, removing traditional morality from agricultural decisions, other farmers maintain traditional practices within their agroecological landscape.

This presentation addresses the role that the Temple Israel congregants played in the creation of the documentary and their reaction to the completed project. A study, such as this oral history, cannot progress efficiently or effectively without the acceptance and participation of the members. The length of time needed to gather the materials and the complexity of purpose resulted in some misinterpretations of the ultimate purpose of the project and tension between researchers and community. However, with the completion of something tangible the attitudes of the community have changed.

This presentation examines the impact of the Seeing Traditions photography exhibition, displayed in Meyer Library, Missouri State University library for three months, on its viewers. Anyone who came through the library saw at least part of the exhibition because of the central location of the exhibition space. Seeing Traditions, funded in part by the Community Foundation of the Ozarks, is part of the Telling Traditions Project, funded in part by MO Arts Council — Folk Arts Program, that has the “goal ... to document the legacy and preserve the living traditions of Ozarks’” Jews.  It is a 123.5 linear foot exhibit of photographs and explanation that “examines common themes found in all religions, like prayer, tradition, and aesthetic, and reflects how the community embraces them. The hope is to destroy preconceived notions about Jewish practices and religion.”  The photographs used for this exhibit were chosen from the over 1400 photographs taken during the Telling Traditions year-long study of Temple Israel, Springfield, Missouri. This paper examines the most commented on images in the exhibition, seen with a power point presentation, what was said about them, and what the exhibition visitors learned about Jews in the Ozarks and themselves.

In this feature-length documentary, Donald Harington, ‘America’s greatest unknown writer,’ describes the origins of Stay More, the fictional Ozark village where he sets his novels. Harington shares his childhood memories of the tiny town of Drakes Creek (the model for Stay More) and reflects on his troubled relationships with his parents and the devastating loss of his hearing at the age of 12. Harrington also recounts the dubious joys of getting his early novels into print, with their sales never matching the favorable notices, blending these stories with humorous perspectives on the writer’s life (particularly the writerly penchant for liquor), religion, and sex. What emerges is a bittersweet portrait of an inspired but haunted artist, a writer deeply rooted in American folk traditions whose triumphs seemed always to be matched by deep disappointments, a novelist who not only blends comic relief into his tragedies but poignant ‘tragic relief’ into his comedies.