The Ozarks has a past. It’s beginning to have a history—and a regional story that continues to materialize in a variety of scholarly studies. For decades the discourse on the Ozarks and its inhabitants was dominated by folklorists and travel writers, who tended to seek out and document only the anachronistic and eccentric qualities of life in the region. The result was a region and people obscured by myth, romance, and nostalgia.
By the end of the twentieth century, there were few scholarly studies of the Ozarks in such fields as history, literature, religion, historical archaeology, anthropology, and sociology. The past two decades have witnessed the emergence of a corpus of studies that collectively have established a budding subfield in regional studies, in Ozarks Studies. While all of these works are grounded within the scholarship of a specific discipline, many of them consciously place the Ozarks and its people at the locus of scholarly debate, evincing a burgeoning Ozarks studies movement and a growing recognition of it among scholars.
The Ozarks Studies series acknowledges the awakening of a scholarly Ozarks studies movement—one that crosses disciplinary boundaries as it approaches regional study from a variety of vantage points—and positions the University of Arkansas Press as the publisher at the forefront of the movement. As the only university press headquartered within the Ozarks region and as a press with a solid background in the publication of books on the region—Rafferty’s The Ozarks, Land and Life, Morrow’s Shepherd of the Hills Country, Harper’s White Man’s Heaven, Sizemore’s Ozark Vernacular Houses, and many more—the University of Arkansas Press is ideally suited for the first series that will level a scholarly eye on the Ozarks and Ozarkers.
The editor invites the submission of proposals for scholarly, book-length manuscripts that expand our understanding of the region and in the process contribute to broader disciplinary fields and dialogues. Though grounded in a comprehension of the region’s history, the multidisciplinary series also considers manuscripts in literature, religious studies, anthropology, historical archaeology, political science, and cultural geography, among other disciplines. We accept proposals for monographs, anthologies, edited collections of scholarly articles or essays, and edited manuscripts based on primary sources. Manuscripts should reflect a familiarity with previous scholarship on the region and its people and engage themes and interpretations relevant to Ozarks studies.
Series Editor
Brooks Blevins is widely recognized as the foremost scholar of Ozarks history. The Noel Boyd Professor of Ozarks Studies at Missouri State University, Blevins teaches a variety of Ozark-themed courses, from Ozarks history to literature of the Ozarks. He is the author of a number of books and articles on the history of the region, most notably the three-volume History of the Ozarks (University of Illinois Press), which has become the definitive history of the region. He is also the author of the award-winning Arkansas/Arkansaw: How Bear Hunters, Hillbillies, and Good Ol’ Boys Defined a State (2009) and coeditor with Gene Hyde of John Quincy Wolf’s Life in the Leatherwoods (2000), both published by the University of Arkansas Press.
“Until very recent times, serious studies of Ozark history and culture have been few and far between. Most of us have been content to let travel writers and folklorists portray the region as a place where life was simpler, the landscape remained unspoiled, and time stood still. While some of that description was true, much of it was not. Now, finally, we can drink from a deep, clear, wellspring of Ozark reality instead of the snake oil that produced bucolic visions of the good old days. To force the scales from our nostalgic eyes, the University of Arkansas Press has launched its Ozarks Studies series to publish new scholarship about the old Ozarks. Brooks Blevins, Noel Boyd Professor of Ozarks Studies at Missouri State University, serves as the series editor, guaranteeing the works included will examine the region with objectivity and clarity.”
—Susan Young, Arkansas Historical Quarterly (Autumn 2017)
Men of No Reputation: Robert Boatright, the Buckfoot Gang, and the Fleecing of Middle America by Kimberly Harper has won the 2025 Missouri Conference on History Book Award. Robert Boatright was one of Middle America’s greatest confidence men. Although little...
Mob Rule in the Ozarks: The Missouri and North Arkansas Railroad Strike, 1921-1923 by Kenneth Barnes, has been reviewed by Maylon Rice in the Fort Smith Historical Society Journal. “This well written and meticulously researched volume by Kenneth Barnes, distinguished...
Kim Harper has reviewed Newspaperwoman of the Ozarks in the most recent issue of the Arkansas Historical Quarterly. “Kelly’s biography of Lucile Morris Upton chronicles the life of an Ozarks journalist, recounts the tension between Ozarks romanticists and progressives...
Dan Miller has reviewed Broadcasting the Ozarks: Si Siman and Country Music at the Crossroads by Kitty Ledbetter and Scott Foster Siman at Bluegrass Unlimited. “Although this new book about the country music scene in Springfield, Missouri (from the 1930s through the...
Sarah Neidhardt and her mother Wendy McPhee joined Ken Jones at KBOO in Portland to talk about Sarah's memoir Twenty Acres: A Seventies Childhood in the Woods. You can listen to a recording of the show at KBOO. Sarah Neidhardt was an infant when her parents joined the...
Broadcasting the Ozarks: Si Siman and Country Music at the Crossroads has been reviewed in the Missouri Historical Review. “Like most creative scenes that unexpectedly blossom, Springfield was willed to prominence by a single person: Si Siman, who helped develop the...
Steve Yates has reviewed Men of No Reputation: Robert Boatright, the Buckfoot Gang, and the Fleecing of Middle America by Kimberly Harper in the December issue of OzarksWatch Magazine. “Only a historian and writer of Harper’s caliber," writes Yates, "could cope with...
Twenty Acres: A Seventies Childhood in the Woods by Sarah Neidhardt has been reviewed in the October 2024 issue of the Missouri Historical Review. “By not glorifying the BTTL (back to the land) movement, Twenty Acres will help scholars consider harder questions about...
Men of No Reputation: Robert Boatright, the Buckfoot Gang, and the Fleecing of Middle America by Kimberly Harper has been reviewed in the October 2024 issue of the Missouri Historical Review. “Harper’s dogged research in archives, court records, and newspapers across...
Newspaperwoman of the Ozarks: The Life and Times of Lucile Morris Upton by Susan Croce Kelly has won the 2024 Missouri Literary Award, given by the Missouri Library Association. Lucile Morris Upton landed her first newspaper job out West in the early 1920s, then...
