Examine women's contributions to filmin front of the camera and behind it! An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Women in Early American Films: 1895-1930 is an A-to-Z reference guide (illustrated with over 150 hard-to-find photographs!) that dispels the myth that men dominated the film industry during its formative years. Denise Lowe, author of Women and American Television: An Encyclopedia, presents a rich collection that profiles many of the women who were crucial to the development of cinema as an industryand as an art form. Whether working behind the scenes as producers or publicists, behind the cameras as writers, directors, or editors, or in front of the lens as flappers, vamps, or serial queens, hundreds of women made profound and lasting contributions to the evolution of the motion picture production. An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Women in Early American Films: 1895-1930 gives you immediate access to the histories of many of the women who pioneered the early days of cinemaon screen and off. The book chronicles the well-known figures of the era, such as Alice Guy, Mary Pickford, and Francis Marion but gives equal billing to those who worked in anonymity as the industry moved from the silent era into the age of sound. Their individual stories of professional success and failure, artistic struggle and strife, and personal triumph and tragedy fill in the plot points missing from the complete saga of Hollywood's beginnings. Pioneers of the motion picture business found in An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Women in Early American Films include: Dorothy Arnzer, the first woman to join the Directors Guild of America and the only female director to make a successful transition from silent films to sound Jane Murfin, playwright and screenwriter who became supervisor of motion pictures at RKO Studios Gene Gauntier, the actress and scenarist whose adaptation of Ben Hur for the Kalem Film Company led to a landmark copyright infringement case Theda Bara, whose on-screen popularity virtually built Fox Studios before typecasting and overexposure destroyed her career Madame Sul-Te-Wan, nee Nellie Conley, the first African-American actor or actress to sign a film contract and be a featured performer Dorothy Davenport, who parlayed the publicity surrounding her actor-husband's drug-related death into a career as a producer of social reform melodramas Lois Weber, a street-corner evangelist who became one of the best-known and highest-paid directors in Hollywood Lina Basquette, the Screen Tragedy Girl who married and divorced studio mogul Sam Warner, led The Hollywood Aristocrats Orchestra, claimed to have been a spy for the American Office of Strategic Services during World War II, and became a renowned dog expert in her later years and many more! An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Women in Early American Films: 1895-1930 also includes comprehensive appendices of the WAMPAS Baby Stars, the silent stars remembered in the Graumann Chinese Theater Forecourt of the Stars and those immortalized on the Hollywood Walk of Stars. The book is invaluable as a resource for researchers, librarians, academics working in film, popular culture, and women's history, and to anyone interested either professionally or casually in the early days of Hollywood and the motion picture industry.

Examine women's contributions to filmin front of the camera and behind it! An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Women in Early American Films: 1895-1930 is an A-to-Z reference guide (illustrated with over 150 hard-to-find photographs!) that dispels the myth that men dominated the film industry during its formative years. Denise Lowe, author of Women and American Television: An Encyclopedia, presents a rich collection that profiles many of the women who were crucial to the development of cinema as an industryand as an art form. Whether working behind the scenes as producers or publicists, behind the cameras as writers, directors, or editors, or in front of the lens as flappers, vamps, or serial queens, hundreds of women made profound and lasting contributions to the evolution of the motion picture production. An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Women in Early American Films: 1895-1930 gives you immediate access to the histories of many of the women who pioneered the early days of cinemaon screen and off. The book chronicles the well-known figures of the era, such as Alice Guy, Mary Pickford, and Francis Marion but gives equal billing to those who worked in anonymity as the industry moved from the silent era into the age of sound. Their individual stories of professional success and failure, artistic struggle and strife, and personal triumph and tragedy fill in the plot points missing from the complete saga of Hollywood's beginnings. Pioneers of the motion picture business found in An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Women in Early American Films include: Dorothy Arnzer, the first woman to join the Directors Guild of America and the only female director to make a successful transition from silent films to sound Jane Murfin, playwright and screenwriter who became supervisor of motion pictures at RKO Studios Gene Gauntier, the actress and scenarist whose adaptation of Ben Hur for the Kalem Film Company led to a landmark copyright infringement case Theda Bara, whose on-screen popularity virtually built Fox Studios before typecasting and overexposure destroyed her career Madame Sul-Te-Wan, nee Nellie Conley, the first African-American actor or actress to sign a film contract and be a featured performer Dorothy Davenport, who parlayed the publicity surrounding her actor-husband's drug-related death into a career as a producer of social reform melodramas Lois Weber, a street-corner evangelist who became one of the best-known and highest-paid directors in Hollywood Lina Basquette, the Screen Tragedy Girl who married and divorced studio mogul Sam Warner, led The Hollywood Aristocrats Orchestra, claimed to have been a spy for the American Office of Strategic Services during World War II, and became a renowned dog expert in her later years and many more! An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Women in Early American Films: 1895-1930 also includes comprehensive appendices of the WAMPAS Baby Stars, the silent stars remembered in the Graumann Chinese Theater Forecourt of the Stars and those immortalized on the Hollywood Walk of Stars. The book is invaluable as a resource for researchers, librarians, academics working in film, popular culture, and women's history, and to anyone interested either professionally or casually in the early days of Hollywood and the motion picture industry.

A 2021 Kansas Notable Book  Northern Cheyenne Ledger Art by Fort Robinson Breakout Survivors presents the images of Native warriors—Wild Hog, Porcupine, and Left Hand, as well as possibly Noisy Walker (or Old Man), Old Crow, Blacksmith, and Tangled Hair—as they awaited probable execution in the Dodge City jail in 1879. When Sheriff Bat Masterson provided drawing materials, the men created war books that were coded to avoid confrontation with white authorities and to narrate survival from a Northern Cheyenne point of view. The prisoners used the ledger-art notebooks to maintain their cultural practices during incarceration and as gifts and for barter with whites in the prison where they struggled to survive. The ledger-art notebooks present evidence of spiritual practice and include images of contemporaneous animals of the region, hunting, courtship, dance, social groupings, and a few war-related scenes. Denise Low and Ramon Powers include biographical materials from the imprisonment and subsequent release, which extend the historical arc of Northern Cheyenne heroes of the Plains Indian Wars into reservation times. Sources include selected ledger drawings, army reports, letters, newspapers, and interviews with some of the Northern Cheyenne men and their descendants. Accounts from a firsthand witness of the drawings and composition of the ledgers themselves give further information about Native perspectives on the conflicted history of the North American West in the nineteenth century and beyond. This group of artists jailed after the tragedy of the Fort Robinson Breakout have left a legacy of courage and powerful art.

“Grandchildren meet their grandparents at the end,� Denise Low says, “as tragic figures. We remember their decline and deaths. . . . The story we see as grandchildren is like a garden covered by snow, just outlines visible.� Low brings to light deeply held secrets of Native ancestry as she recovers the life story of her Kansas grandfather, Frank Bruner (1889–1963). She remembers her childhood in Kansas, where her grandparents remained at a distance, personally and physically, from their grandchildren, despite living only a few miles away. As an adult, she comes to understand her grandfather’s Delaware (Lenape) legacy of persecution and heroic survival in the southern plains of the early 1900s, where the Ku Klux Klan attacked Native people along with other ethnic minorities. As a result of such experiences, the Bruner family fled to Kansas City and suppressed their non-European ancestry as completely as possible. As Low unravels this hidden family history of the Lenape diaspora, she discovers the lasting impact of trauma and substance abuse, the deep sense of loss and shame related to suppressed family emotions, and the power of collective memory. Low traveled extensively around Kansas, tracking family history until she understood her grandfather’s political activism and his healing heritage of connections to the land. In this moving exploration of her grandfather’s life, the former poet laureate of Kansas evokes the beauty of the Flint Hills grasslands, the hardships her grandfather endured, and the continued discovery of his teachings.  

"Grandchildren meet their grandparents at the end," Denise Low says, "as tragic figures. We remember their decline and deaths. . . . The story we see as grandchildren is like a garden covered by snow, just outlines visible." Low brings to light deeply held secrets of Native ancestry as she recovers the life story of her Kansas grandfather, Frank Bruner (1889-1963). She remembers her childhood in Kansas, where her grandparents remained at a distance, personally and physically, from their grandchildren, despite living only a few miles away. As an adult, she comes to understand her grandfather's Delaware (Lenape) legacy of persecution and heroic survival in the southern plains of the early 1900s, where the Ku Klux Klan attacked Native people along with other ethnic minorities. As a result of such experiences, the Bruner family fled to Kansas City and suppressed their non-European ancestry as completely as possible. As Low unravels this hidden family history of the Lenape diaspora, she discovers the lasting impact of trauma and substance abuse, the deep sense of loss and shame related to suppressed family emotions, and the power of collective memory. Low traveled extensively around Kansas, tracking family history until she understood her grandfather's political activism and his healing heritage of connections to the land. In this moving exploration of her grandfather's life, the former poet laureate of Kansas evokes the beauty of the Flint Hills grasslands, the hardships her grandfather endured, and the continued discovery of his teachings.

Ghost Stories of the New West: From Einstein's Brain to Geronimo's Boots takes readers on a head-to-toe discovery of colliding cultures, shifting winds, and legendary figures who still populate the Great Plains region. Low, of mixed ancestries herself, brings to life Native and settler heritages, sometimes in form of ghost stories. Kevin Rabas writes: In a smooth mixture of poetry and prose Denise Low explores European and Native approaches towards ghosts, pondering the past and the present, life and the afterlife--and the land to which we are all held. Denise Low, Laureate, has 20 books of poetry and essays, including Natural Theologies: Essays on Literature of the Middle Plains (The Backwaters Press 2010); Words of a Prairie Alchemist (Ice Cube 2006), a Kansas Notable Book; and Thailand Journal: Poems, a Kansas City Star notable book (Woodley 2003). Her Three Voices is a text, image, and videography project with painter Paul Hotvedt and videographer Josh Kendall. She is a board member of the Associated Writers & Writing Programs, 2008-2012. She has taught creative writing at Haskell Indian Nations University, the University of Kansas, and the University of Richmond. Awards are from the Academy of American Poets, The Newberry Library, Lannan Foundation, Kansas Arts Council, Kansas Committee for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Humanities, Lichtor Poetry Competition, Pushcart Prize Nominations, and Roberts Foundation. She has a PhD from the University of Kansas and MFA from Wichita State University.

A collection of Kansas poems by William Stafford with additional commentary on the man and his work by current notable writers including Jonathan Holden, Denise Low, Thomas Fox Averill, Kirsten Bosnak, Robert Day, Steven Hind, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Al Ortolani, Linda Rodriguez, Ralph Salisbury, William Sheldon, Kim Stafford, Robert Stewart, Ingrid Wendt and Fred Whitehead, who have been inspired by William Stafford and by Kansas alike.

Denise Low, 2nd poet laureate of Kansas, revives the British tradition of one-page publications, called "broadsides," as a way to present poetry. Her web-based broadsides include over forty poets with Kansas connections: Gordon Parks, William Stafford, James Tate, B.F. Fairchild, Diane Glancy, Albert Goldbarth, Jo McDougall, and Kevin Young to name a few. This book collects her Ad Astra Poetry Project broadsides in print form. Each entry presents a biography, poem, and commentary about the poem in concise form, easily accessible for readers. The 3rd Kansas poet laureate, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, adds discussion questions for those who wish to use this book for classes or other groups. Clear discussion of the poems, free of jargon, makes this ideal for sharing with students and friends. Low selects poems that comment, in some way, on Kansas experience. These Kansas poetry publications-available to arts organizations, schools, libraries, and newspapers throughout the state-have attracted a national following.

E. Donald Two-Rivers, known by friends as Eddie, was an Anishinaabe (Ojibwa) activist and writer who used words, not violence, to promote civil rights for all oppressed people. This is his only collection of poetry in print. This Chicago "urban Indian" addresses issues of corporate greed, worker exploitation, and prejudice. His writing has more than one note, however; he also writes of his traditional upbringing in the Canadian forest, deftly incorporating Ojibwa language, and tender love lyrics. In the 1990s Two-Rivers founded the Red Path Theater Company, for which he acted, directed, and wrote plays. His honors include the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation in 1999 for a collection of short stories (Survivor's Medicine, Oklahoma University Press) and the Iron-Eyes Cody Award for Peace, 1992. He lived in Green Bay, Wisconsin, from 2002 until his death in 2008. In an afterward, Denise Low gives biographical and critical overview of this seminal Civil Rights era activist.

Kansas Poet Laureate 2007-2009 Denise Low's most complete collection of lyrical verse. Low's concerns with cultural sustainability in the Great Plains region encompasses geological history, the West, gardens, indigenous plants and animals, and more. Fellow Kansas poet William Stafford praised Low for her use of "so many good words in diligent pursuit of accuracy." Iowa poet laureate Robert Dana wrote: No one understands better than Densie Low the efect of Midwestern vistas of time and space." Diane Glancy writes, "Denise Low has a voice informed and shaped by the land."

Langston Hughes, the great American poet who inspired the Harlem Renaissance, spent most of his childhood (1902-1915) in Lawrence, Ks. This biography includes 60 B&W photos of Lawrence places connected to Hughes, along with text, maps, and a family tree of known African, American Indian, and White ancestry. A story emerges of his prominent abolitionist grandparents, Charles and Mary Langston, who lived in the Lawrence area from 1870, and their struggle for education and civil rights. Many buildings from their and Langston Hughes's time survive in Lawrence, a place where the spirit of political activism is still alive. "Langston Hughes in Lawrence is a remarkable visual portrait of a place that nurtured a man known for his words more than one hundred years after his birth. We owe a debt of gratitude to Low and Weso for bringing Hughes's boyhood home alive, for returning us to those years between 1902 and 1915. Here we can see and imagine the world that made its permanent mark on the foremost poet of the 20th century." -Maryemma Graham, Langston Hughes National Poetry Project, University of Kansas "No previous scholar of Langston Hughes' boyhood in Lawrence has examined the complexities in Hughes's multiracial family or in his community with the comprehensiveness and insight that Low and Weso provide in their new study." Elizabeth Schultz, University of Kansas.

The Fluid Boundaries of Suffrage and Jim Crow: Staking Claims in the American Heartland engages in an important conversation about race relations in the twentieth century and significantly extends the historical narrative of the Civil Rights Movement. The essays in this collection examine instances of racial and gender oppression in the American heartland-which is conceived of here as having a specific cultural significance which resists diversity-in the twentieth century, instances which have often been ignored or overshadowed in typical historical narratives. The contributors explore the intersections of suffrage, race relations, and cultural histories, and add to an ongoing dialogue about representations of race and gender within the context of regional and national narratives

The Fluid Boundaries of Suffrage and Jim Crow: Staking Claims in the American Heartland engages in an important conversation about race relations in the twentieth century and significantly extends the historical narrative of the Civil Rights Movement. The essays in this collection examine instances of racial and gender oppression in the American heartland-which is conceived of here as having a specific cultural significance which resists diversity-in the twentieth century, instances which have often been ignored or overshadowed in typical historical narratives. The contributors explore the intersections of suffrage, race relations, and cultural histories, and add to an ongoing dialogue about representations of race and gender within the context of regional and national narratives

This work presents more than 400 A-Z entries on the individuals, programs, media innovations, and broad topics that tell the story of women's involvement both in front of and behind the television camera. From thought-provoking trends to entertaining trivia, this delightfully illustrated A-Z encyclopedia covers it all: Gracie Allen, Ally McBeal, Asian women, black sitcoms, cable TV, the Emmys, tabloid and talk shows, older women on television, Penny Marshall, Our Miss Brooks, Jane Pauley, soap operas, Jamie Tarses, That Girl, Oprah Winfrey, and more. Although limited to the role of women in and on television, Women and American Television is notable for unearthing the more obscure personalities and programs not covered by other television encyclopedias. Includes cross references, bibliography, helpful appendixes, and a subject index. A-Z entries range from Gracie Allen and Ally McBeal to talk shows and soap operas Includes cross references, a bibliography, helpful appendixes, and a subject index Delightfully illustrated