Dakota, Or What's a Heaven For: Getting the Word Out Through Conferences and Readings

Grant:

Lecturers' Professional Development Fund (LPDF)

Academic Year:

2011 - 2012 (June 1, 2011 through May 31, 2012)

Funding Requested:

$2,000.00

Project Dates:

Sun, 01/01/2012 - Mon, 12/31/2012

Applicant(s):

bkmarsh

Overview of the Project:

In 2010 my second novel, Dakota, Or What's a Heaven For, literary historical fiction set in late-19th-century Dakota Territory, was published by the North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies. Several readers and colleagues have noted that this novel, which highlights the gendered, ethnic, and economic dimensions of the myth of independence that accompanied the European and Yankee settlement of the west, would be of interest to students and professors of nineteenth-century American history, women's literature, Western and Midwestern literature, as well as LGBT studies. I am requesting a Lecturers' Professional Development Grant for $2000 to help fund travel to academic conferences and to readings sponsored by university Creative Writing Programs and English Departments.

Final Report Fields

Project Objectives:

The immediate objective of this project was to introduce my novel, Dakota, Or What’s a Heaven For (North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies, 2010) to professors of Women’s Literature, Western and Midwestern Literature, and LGBT Studies. The long-term objective is to see Dakota adopted for course use by professors interested in the gendered, ethnic and economic dimensions of western settlement in the 19th-century.

Project Achievements:

I was a Visiting Writer at Bismarck State College (BSC), ND, March 1-4, 2012. At BSC I met with three classes of undergraduates, as well as with readers in the community as part of the 2012 BSC Library ‘BookTalk’ series. I gave readings from Dakota, Or What’s a Heaven For at two academic conferences: The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature (SSML), Michigan State University, May 2012, and The Western Literature Association, Texas Tech University, November 2012. In March 2013 I was the Visiting Writer at Dickinson State University, ND, sponsored by Heart River Writers’ Circle in conjunction with Women’s Voices. The impact of this project cannot be defined at this point, as the objective was to lay the groundwork for course adoption. This goal was met. Impacts on students, courses, departments and programs are all in the future, at this university and beyond.

Continuation:

A project like this develops slowly and its path cannot be predicted. Following my reading at the 2012 SSML conference, a paper on Dakota, Or What’s a Heaven For was on the program for the 2012 Midwestern Modern Language Association, authored by an SSML member. In April 2014 I was invited to speak about Dakota, Or What’s a Heaven For at a brown bag luncheon with historians as part of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West. A panel on North Dakota’s Bioregional Imagination has been proposed for the 2015 Association of Writers and Writing Programs by the faculty member who invited me to Dickinson State University. In short, I do not know yet of an instance in which the novel has been adopted for course use, and I can never be certain how information about the potential of the novel is disseminated, but there is movement in the right direction.

Dissemination:

The merit of Dakota, Or What’s a Heaven For for course adoption cannot be considered separately from its affordability for students. Beginning July 2014 a POD paperback will be available from Untreed Reads, the publisher of the electronic format of the novel. Untreed Reads has an agreement with Espresso Print Machine from On Demand Books (available at The University of Michigan Library).

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