Death, Murder, and Mayhem: Stories of Violence and Healing on the Plains

April 16-19, 2008
Embassy Suites Omaha Downtown/Old Market, Omaha, Nebraska

Co-sponsored by the Department of English, University of Nebraska at Omaha, and the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

The haunted land of the Great Plains has long suggested stories of conflict and loss, of wrenching change and difficult healing. Indeed, the Plains themselves have carried the projections of a nation eager to dramatize fantasies of violence and prurient desires in its newspapers, fiction, television, and cinema. From the Indian Wars to the BTK killings, the Great Plains have provided a narrative stage for violent action. The nature of the Plains incites such stories as well, as if climate and geography—brutal drought, tornados, killing blizzards, unyielding soils—conspire against the humans who live there. Yet the Dime Novel appeal of gunslingers and true crime, the sensationalism of cultural conflict, and the headlines of environmental catastrophe elide the counter stories of justice sought, communities built, and healing found.

The symposium will examine the representation of violence on the Plains from multiple perspectives, encouraging interdisciplinary analyses from the arts and humanities, social science, and natural science. Violence that runs the gamut from the psychopathic to the socially sanctioned, from the environmental to the communal will be probed and discussed. Participants are encouraged to share their own unique perspectives.