American Grain Research Articles

Bob's Beat: Dylan, A Poet among Poets

Abstract: This essay explores the literary resonances of the Nobel Prize committee's 2016 citation of Bob Dylan's work "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition." That "new poetic expression" has grown out of and developed through a spirit of iconoclasm and estrangement very much in the American grain, and it runs through not only the American folk "song tradition" but through the Beat Generation of writers, even as the shape-changing troubadour-poet never was, nor would he ever become a full-fledged, card-carrying Beat poet, nor a traditional poet of any sort, as he became a poet among poets on the road, finally, to becoming Bob Dylan, or rather to creating Dylan, Nobel laureate.

Genetic Incompatibilities and Evolutionary Rescue by Wild Relatives Shaped Grain Amaranth Domestication.

Crop domestication and the subsequent expansion of crops have long been thought of as a linear process from a wild ancestor to a domesticate. However, evidence of gene flow from locally adapted wild relatives that provided adaptive alleles into crops has been identified in multiple species. Yet, little is known about the evolutionary consequences of gene flow during domestication and the interaction of gene flow and genetic load in crop populations. We study the pseudo-cereal grain amaranth that has been domesticated three times in different geographic regions of the Americas. We quantify the amount and distribution of gene flow and genetic load along the genome of the three grain amaranth species and their two wild relatives. Our results show ample gene flow between crop species and between crops and their wild relatives. Gene flow from wild relatives decreased genetic load in the three crop species. This suggests that wild relatives could provide evolutionary rescue by replacing deleterious alleles in crops. We assess experimental hybrids between the three crop species and found genetic incompatibilities between one Central American grain amaranth and the other two crop species. These incompatibilities might have created recent reproductive barriers and maintained species integrity today. Together, our results show that gene flow played an important role in the domestication and expansion of grain amaranth, despite genetic species barriers. The domestication of plants was likely not linear and created a genomic mosaic by multiple contributors with varying fitness effects for today's crops.

Functional composition, physiological effect and agronomy of future food quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.): A review

The South American grain quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.), which is full of nutrients, is used worldwide as a nutritious food and is occasionally referred to as a "superfood." In addition to being high in nutrients, quinoa also offers health-promoting qualities such as antidiabetic, antioxidant, antiobesity, and cardio-beneficial. Quinoa is a great source of protein, amino acids, important minerals, and omega-3 fatty acids and is gluten-free. The crop's nutritional qualities are thought to be a way to combat malnutrition on a worldwide scale. Quinoa is also acknowledged as a crop with significant value in terms of resistance to abiotic stressors, and there is considerable interest in integrating it into subsistence agricultural production systems globally. This review intends to draw the attention of researchers to quinoa nutritional, antinutritional and physicochemical components and their health benefits, along with its biological and agronomical aspects, because of its potential use in food and other industries. Six databases were searched for works from 1943 to 2022. Overall, numerous research and pieces of evidence have pointed to the useful qualities of quinoa, with the majority of them concentrating on its health benefits. Quinoa consumption carries a minimal and manageable risk in relation to the possible benefits. As a result, it can be said that quinoa has a lot of potentials to be marketed as a nutritious food. More research is required to establish the effectiveness of quinoa consumption for obtaining certain health impacts.

The expansion of rainfed grain production can generate spontaneous hydrological changes that reduce climate sensitivity

As global warming intensifies climatic extremes, the need to understand their effects on farming systems, particularly under rainfed conditions, grows. During the last three decades the Argentine Pampas, a major global grain exporter, hosted an unprecedented expansion of cultivation under unirrigated and undrained conditions. Simultaneously, the extreme flatness and lack of water infrastructure favored groundwater level raises where agriculture expanded. However, the effect of climate extremes and elevated water tables buffering droughts but increasing flooding risk on the sensitivity of regional grain production remains unknown. Based on agronomic, weather, water table, and remote sensing data, we analyzed the production response to dry, wet, and flooded periods over the last 35 years, and to the ongoing water table raises during the last 15 years, focusing on sown and effective harvested area (harvested/sown area) and yield. Soybean and maize production increased 5.9 and 3.3-fold, respectively, as a result of area and yield growths. On average, droughts decreased production (−25 % for soybean and −14 % for maize) and wet periods increased it (+14 % for soybean and +17 % for maize) through their effects on yields and effective harvested area. Floods reduced production (−8 % for soybean and −10 % for maize) by decreasing sown and effective harvested area, leaving yields unaffected. As water tables rose, a positive yield effect during drought was detected, with counties with shallow water tables (< 3 m depth) halving yield cuts during dry years. Lacking water infrastructure, this South American grain belt is currently matching the annual production variability levels observed under intense irrigation and drainage in North America. The unexpected water table level raises of the Pampas had an overall positive effect on grain production, with flood disruptions being more than compensated by drought buffering. This balance may change in the future, calling for a deeper understanding of these complex relationships between climate, hydrology and agriculture.

The Kingdom of Rye: A Brief History of Russian Food by Darra Goldstein

Goldstein has written an introductory text for the general reader who has an interest in Russia’s history and culture, but who does not have expertise in its food history. This book does not present new material and the intent is not to break new ground theoretically or empirically. The reader who is expecting a rigorous analysis of Russian food policy will be disappointed; there is no central argument and no endnotes or citations to references. Instead, the book is a well-written, broad history that is accessible to a wide readership. The author presents a well-informed portrait of Russian food that is part memoir, part cookbook, and part historiography.The analytical approaches for the book’s three lengthy chapters are sociological, ethnographic, and cultural anthropological. A fourth chapter, which for some reason is unnumbered, covers the whole of the post-Soviet period in twenty-five pages. The central theme in the first chapter—the longest, and in this reader’s opinion, the strongest—concerns the role of food in Russian culture through the ages. The interplay between food and culture is the focus here—the food that was available, where it came from, how it was prepared, and how it was eaten. The author provides detailed descriptions of foods, drink, ingredients, taste, and diet throughout Russian history, all loosely tied to class. The first chapter clearly draws upon the author’s previous writings and expertise, and she is successful in bringing food to life.My criticisms of the book are fourfold. First, the book covers a lot of material, as is expected in an introductory text, but the treatment of its various subjects varies in depth and sophistication. For example, though chapter 1 is engaging, using food as both a dependent and independent variable, I would have liked to have seen a deeper analysis of how food impacted and changed culture, and how culture in turn shaped the demand for different foods. Another example, perhaps the least satisfying aspect of the book, is the discussion of government food policy, which is overly general, lacking detail and nuance.Second, the author conflates dacha plots and household gardens in chapter 2, which muddles the discussion. An uninitiated reader to Russia is likely not to understand the differences between these two types of land usage from the discussion (89–92). It is true that there is some overlap between the two, but household gardens are distinct in several ways—in terms of their legal status, registration, size, use, and users—from dacha plots and these nuances are not clear from the author’s discussion.A third criticism concerns the selection of material. Russia’s 1891 and 1921/2 famines are discussed, but the 1932/3 famine in Ukraine receives only one-half of a sentence. The 1946/7 famine is completely ignored. Likewise, there is no discussion of the 1962 uprising over food prices in Novocherkassk, which represented the most overt anti-Soviet collective action in the ussr’s history. There is an important section on ancient trade routes that brought different foods and spices to pre-Tsarist Russia, but little discussion of food trade in the Soviet period (aside from passing mention of the importation of American grain).A fourth criticism, and perhaps the most important, is that the author misses an opportunity to explore in depth important questions regarding food in Russian society. The author’s research design is to discuss the “what” rather than the “why,” which leaves holes in the discussion. The author, for example, includes only a brief discussion of collectivization (71–74). Collectivization was the single most important event in Soviet Russia’s agrarian history, but based on the author’s abbreviated discussion, the reader would be mystified about what collectivization was and why it was undertaken. Further, why is the role of the state at times active and other times passive in introducing or allowing foreign foods to influence the Russian diet? Why was the impact of foreign food so transformative to the Russian diet in the post-Soviet period, a diet that in chapter 1 the author depicted as inherently tied to Russian culture and identity? The book is intended as an introduction, but brevity is not always a virtue.In sum, the author has achieved a Herculean task in tackling the history of Russian food. The introductory reader will benefit from the wealth of material and scope of her coverage. At the same time, she raises as many questions as she answers.

Two American Poets—Wallace Stevens &amp; William Carlos Williams: From the Collection of Alan M. Klein. The Grolier Club, New York, 2019.

<i>Two American Poets—Wallace Stevens &amp; William Carlos Williams: From the Collection of Alan M. Klein.</i> The Grolier Club, New York, 2019.

A Wilder Joyce: Influence, Borrowing, Appropriation, Theft

This article re-examines the unintended consequences of American novelist and playwright Thornton Wilder’s lifelong passion for the work of James Joyce, as Wilder was writing what would become his second Pulitzer Prize winning play, The Skin of Our Teeth, while in the midst of ‘unriddling’ Joyce’s final novel, Finnegans Wake. Subsequently, accusations of plagiarism arose from two major Joyce scholars, Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson, who not only questioned the borrowings of a particular playwright in creating a new artwork for the stage but also challenged the practices of commercial theater and contemporary theories of originality and textuality. Exploring The Skin of Our Teeth as an intertext, on the other hand, simultaneously validates Campbell and Robinson’s initial assessment and encourages a rethinking of Wilder’s commitment to Joyce as both a scholar and something of a collaborator. Such a shift would allow the critical community to ask theoretical questions about how this ‘collaboration’ works to afford accessibility and so opens Finnegans Wake to a wider audience. Wilder might thus be seen as offering something like a thematic catalogue to the novel in parallel to the ‘theme keys’ he outlined in his Joyce journals. Such recalibration would reposition Wilder’s contributions, not only as an American playwright but as a pioneering critic and crusading intellectual: a European-focused writer wholly in the American grain, an avant-garde champion like his compatriot Edmund Wilson, one who could recognize, invoke, and engage simultaneously with the European avant-garde and the American theatrical and critical traditions.

Global Geographical Variation in Elemental and Arsenic Species Concentration in Paddy Rice Grain Identifies a Close Association of Essential Elements Copper, Selenium and Molybdenum with Cadmium

Despite the centrality of staple grains for human well-being, both as a source of nutrients and of toxic ions, there is little understanding of where and how elements vary, and if there are particular elements that correlate. Here, for shop bought polished (white) rice, we comprehensively characterized trace (arsenic species, cadmium, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum, rubidium and zinc) and macro-nutrients (calcium, chlorine, potassium, phosphorus and sulphur) for grain purchased in 18 countries, across four continents, a total of 1045 samples. This was to investigate if there were any major differences between geographic location and elemental content, and to observe if there were any patterns in elemental distribution. Greatest variation in the median was observed for the non-essential rubidium (15-fold) and arsenic species (fivefold). Rubidium was the highest in the Americas, lowest in Europe, while inorganic arsenic (iAs) and dimethylarsonic acid (DMA) were low for Africa and high in the South American and European continents. The highest concentrations of cadmium were found in Asian samples, and lowest in South America, with variation within these regions. At the extremes of individual counties, China had fivefold higher concentrations than the global median, while Tanzania was fourfold lower than this value. Calcium, potassium, molybdenum and phosphorus were the highest in European and lowest in African grain, though the fold-differences were relatively low, ~ 0.2, while iron was the highest in African grain and lowest in European, Asian and South American grain, with a ~ twofold difference. Selenium was also higher in Africa versus other regions, and copper, manganese and zinc were the highest in American grain. Factor analysis showed that copper, cadmium, molybdenum, rubidium and selenium were strongly associated together, and these element’s factor loadings were diametrically opposed to less tightly associated calcium, chlorine, manganese, potassium, phosphorus and sulphur. Stepwise additions linear region analysis was performed on log-transformed concentrations to investigate cadmium associations in more detail. Selenium was the greatest predictor of cadmium concentration, followed by molybdenum, accounting for over 50% of the contribution to the adjusted R2. Arsenic species were only weakly correlated with other elements. The implications for these findings with respect to dietary nutrition are discussed. Vietnamese rice was notable in being deficient in macro- and micro-nutrients while also being elevated in cadmium at a median of 0.02 mg/kg, with China though still having a median that is ~ 2.5-fold this concentration. These Chinese concentrations are of particular concern as the 75th percentile for China is 0.1 mg/kg, a value that triggers regulatory action for rice products.

From Port Hope to Thunder Bay

The career of Joseph Goodwin King (1844-1910), grain elevator operator at Port Hope and Port Arthur, Ontario, sheds light on many aspects of Canadian agricultural and economic history— the role of railway companies in the grain trade, the decline of Lake Ontario grain ports, the rise of Thunder Bay on Lake Superior as the major Canadian grain port for western Canada, as well as improvements in North American grain cleaning and drying methods, and grain elevator construction.

Ontology and Emotion in Reflexive Design Practices

Ontology and Emotion in Reflexive Design Practices

INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS FOR MODULAR DRYERS

If a few years ago, with a twofold increase in yields and a severalfold increase in the export potential of the domesticgrain industry, there was a 140% shortage of capacity and almost 150% of drying capacity [4], now the deficit of thiscapacity has not only not decreased, but also increased. And the reason for this is not the low pace of construction or renewalof the production potential of grain procurement enterprises, but rather the outpacing of the growth rate of gross grainproduction over the pace of construction of new elevators.Given the deficit of the world balance in plant foods and the potential of domestic agricultural production, thedisparity between the rate of growth of grain growing capacity and post-harvest processing technologies will requireoperational research and investment decisions for a long time. An important component of them is the improvement ofexisting and the introduction of innovative technologies to intensify the processes of post-harvest processing of grain.In the period of the formed balance of domestic volumes of production of grain with capacities of grain-harvestingenterprises of the post-Soviet period the dominant share of grain drying units were dryers of mine type. Such well-studieddryers during the half-century period of their operation, domestic scientists have improved if not all parameters, then almostall. And producers have thoroughly studied their features and ways to adapt to the needs of drying different cereals, differentpurposes. However, the last few decades have been marked by the intensive introduction of modular grain dryers. It is theshare of which already accounts for the dominant volumes of dehydration of grain harvested.Of the great variety of manufacturers of modular grain dryers, the most innovative are the American ones. Given thegreat interest in dryers of American production, the peculiarities of their technology and methods of leveling layer-by-layeruneven heat and mass transfer, solutions to reduce energy losses of working gases and layer-by-layer grain differences inmoisture content and temperature, methods of controlling the recovered heat -technological features and attention is paid inthis work.As part of the tasks, the authors tried to identify the most distinctive features of such modular dryers, to analyze thedesign, technological, aerodynamic and thermophysical features on the example of American grain dryers modular type newmodels 40FIDPX. The publication presents an analysis of innovative solutions to improve drying technology and features ofproduction operation of such dryers. The causes of heat-aerodynamic imbalance of modular dryers are established and thedecision on their elimination is given. The reasons for the reduction of the active surface of heat and mass transfer arerevealed and the ways of reducing the energy losses of the working gases and unproductive losses of the heat and masstransfer surface are substantiated.

Review: Amber Waves: The Extraordinary Biography of Wheat, from Wild Grass to World Megacrop, by Catherine Zabinski

Review: <i>Amber Waves: The Extraordinary Biography of Wheat, from Wild Grass to World Megacrop</i>, by Catherine Zabinski

Within an American Grain

Within an American Grain

Development of an instant-mix probiotic beverage based on fermented quinoa with reduced phytate content

Quinoa (Chenopodium Quinoa Willd.), a South American grain, has great potential for innovation and development of improved food products because of its protein content and nutritional benefits. The study aimed to develop an instant-mix beverage based on fermented quinoa with reduced phytate content and viable lactic bacteria. Two different lactic fermentation processes were designed known as Fermentation type 1 (F1) and Fermentation type 2 (F2) using Lactobacillus plantarum 299v® to obtain fermented quinoa flour. In F1, roasted quinoa grains were fermented for 9 h whereas raw quinoa grains were fermented for 6 h in F2 followed by drying, roasting and fermenting again for 3 h. Phytate reduction, Lactobacillus growth, acidity, protein content, and estimated mineral absorption were evaluated along with organoleptic acceptability of the product. The fermented quinoa samples (frozen at −20 °C and −80 °C) were freeze-dried for the development of instant powder mix beverage with 3 different fruit flavours. Phytate was significantly reduced (p < 0.05) in 61.8% and 64.4% in F1 and F2 respectively, which increased the estimated mineral absorption (Phy:Fe, 5.5 and 5.3); (Phy:Zn, 9.3 and 8.8) in both fermentations. High microbial viability was obtained in the fermented freeze-dried samples. The developed instant-mix of pineapple-orange flavour with 5% of fermented quinoa flour showed highest acceptability among all flavours during the sensory evaluation. Thus, fermentation is an effective way to improve nutritional and sensorial properties of quinoa. The developed instant-mix beverage with fermented quinoa had reduced phytate content, high probiotic count and better sensorial characteristics than a commercial product.

Smugglers, Pirates, and Patriots: Free Trade in the Age of Revolution

In the early republic, a potent mix of commercial aspirations and ideological naivete characterized US diplomatic relations with South America. Tyson Reeder's book explores how North American visions of inevitable republicanism and free trade across the Western Hemisphere came to naught in Brazil. Surveying the give-and-take of state and merchant power emanating from North America, Brazil, Portugal, and Britain between 1760 and 1830, Reeder argues that experiences with international trade in the early republic disproved US revolutionary assumptions about the incompatibility of monarchy and commercial freedom.The monograph is divided into four parts. Part 1 establishes the context of trading and state relationships between the British and Portuguese empires in the eighteenth century's latter half. Portugal, Madeira, and Brazil bought North American grain, North Americans consumed Madeira wine, and Brazilian gold powered credit relationships with the British Atlantic and the slave trade from Angola. Unlike the British, who enforced illicit trading prohibitions in the North American colonies (a flash point for eventual revolutionary turmoil), the Portuguese never took a hard line on smuggling and mercantilism within their empire. Portuguese subjects in Brazil rarely perceived unlicensed trade as incompatible with fealty to the monarchy.Part 2 examines how the shifting political terrain of British imperial crisis and the American War of Independence altered trading priorities and commercial relationships. Independence from Britain meant that North Americans no longer enjoyed the trading privileges resulting from long-term British naval protection of the Portuguese. Portuguese bans on direct trade with the nascent United States deepened North American convictions that empires and monarchies could not be trusted trading partners.In part 3, Reeder explores how the hopes of US free traders for open trade with an independent Brazil aligned with neither that colony's late eighteenth-century fate nor US lawmakers' early nineteenth-century commercial policies. Early republic luminaries like Thomas Jefferson thought revolution, independence, and free trade inevitable for Brazil. Meanwhile, the Portuguese feared the US republican example in Brazilian uprisings like the 1789–90 Minas conspiracy. Nevertheless, the Portuguese court's movement to Brazil further liberalized Brazilian trade. As Reeder argues, the United States, not trade liberalization, was the problem for Portugal. Compounding the challenges for US merchants, the 1807 Embargo Act forbade the export of US products until foreign powers ceased interfering with US neutral trade. To North American merchants, this disastrous act “seemed to betray liberal ideologies to garner respect from European powers—a betrayal magnified as the Portuguese monarchy liberalized imperial commerce” (p. 134).Reeder examines the deeper dimensions of this disenchantment in part 4's discussion of the nineteenth century's first decades. Initially, North American observers prefigured rebels against Portuguese control in 1817 Pernambuco as latter-day versions of the 1776 patriots in Boston. North American seafarers accepted privateering commissions from José Gervasio Artigas, caudillo of the disputed Banda Oriental of present-day Uruguay and Brazil, to raid Portuguese and Spanish shipping in the pursuit of the region's independence. To maintain future trading opportunities and good standing in the community of nations, US politicians passed the 1817 Neutrality Act, which denied privateers safe harbor in US ports. Ultimately, Brazil's 1822 transition to an imperial monarchy engendered US prejudices about how Brazil's suspect racial composition made republicanism impossible and new conceptualizations of Brazil as a slaveholding paradise.Reeder offers a compelling investigation of trade mentalities and ideological projection. As Brazil delayed independence and then formed into an independent monarchy that liberalized trade, this unique course of decolonization “exposed the fragility of North Americans' commitment to hemispheric republicanism and its tepid attachment to free trade” (p. 237). Reeder's comparative commercial psychoanalysis illuminates deep connections between Brazil and the early United States that scholars have often overlooked. His research is deeply grounded in archival material from Brazil, Portugal, the United States, and Britain. At times, the book can be a bit repetitive and reductionist in its restatement of the paradoxical relationship between imperialism and free trade. Its single-minded focus on the Luso-Atlantic world also left me wondering about where else US beliefs in republican commercial liberalism were being put to the test. This lack of wider context notwithstanding, the book adds a wonderful case study to works such as Caitlin Fitz's Our Sister Republics: The United States in an Age of American Revolutions (2016), on the ideological aspirations of US political thought toward Spanish American independence movements, and Eliga Gould's Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire (2012), on the US struggle for legitimacy in the nineteenth-century community of nations. It will be an important book for historians of Atlantic commerce and early US–Latin American relations.

SOLANUM EMULANS RAF. AND SOLANUM SCABRUM MILL. (SOLANACEAE) IN THE UDMURT REPUBLIC

Information about the finds in the Udmurt Republic of two adventive Solanum species is reported. Of these, Solanum emulans is a new species for the flora of Russia. It is brought to the city of Izhevsk with North American grain. In 1993, three of its locations were discovered: at the Izhevsk railway station and in the wastelands in the courtyards of the Izhevsk bakery plant and the Izhevsk bread-receiving enterprise no. 2. Solanum scabrum is occasionally cultivated by amateur gardeners as an exotic plant. In a wild state, it has been known since 2000. To date, eleven of its locations are known in the cities of Izhevsk, Votkinsk, Mozhga, Sarapul, as well as in Zavyalovsky, Uvinsky, Yakshur-Bodinsky and Yarsky districts. Most of its finds are associated with dumps and municipal waste dumping sites. In the conditions of the Udmurt Republic, Solanum emulans and Solanum scabrum are ephemerophytes. The features that distinguish Solanum emulans and Solanum scabrum from morphologically similar species such as Solanum americanum, Solanum nigrum., Solanum retroflexum are given.

Diplomacy vs. Economics: Examining the Roots of Decline in Sino-U.S. Trade in 1975

Abstract In 1975, the explosive growth of Sino-U.S. trade that only had resumed after 1971 ended with a severe decline from $920 million a year to just $461 million. The cause of the collapse was the unilateral decision of the People’s Republic of China (prc) to cancel several orders from late 1974 to early 1975. Scholars have advanced three reasons for the prc’s action, blaming to trade disputes, Beijing’s desire to punish the Americans for slow progress on the Taiwan issue, and Chinese trade officials preventing radicals from labeled them “compradors.” Each explanation, however, overstates the importance of high-level politics and ignores mid-level exchanges, as trade delegations shuttled back and forth across the Pacific in 1975. The article demonstrates that the real obstacle to trade in 1975 was China’s limited ability to purchase American grain in the same quantities as in the last four years, along with indications of a good future harvest in China emerging at the end of 1974. Economic factors therefore better explain the decline in prc-U.S. trade, providing an example of how in the last years of the Cultural Revolution, Beijing’s economic policy was more pragmatic than one would expect.

The American Short Story and Me

The American Short Story and Me

Technological and institutional lock-in and excessive synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use on North American grain and oilseed farms

This intervention examines commodity grain and oilseed farmers’ over reliance on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer in North America. Most grain and oilseed farmers apply synthetic nitrogen fertilizer at rates higher than necessary in order to ensure maximum yields. At the same time, high fertilizer application rates lead to increased farm input expenses and generate significant amounts of water pollution and excessive greenhouse gas emissions. A number of low-cost alternative approaches have been developed which can significantly reduce or eliminate the need for synthetic nitrogen fertilizer while maintaining farm profitability. But such practices have only seen limited adoption by Canadian and US farmers. This is despite significant production cost savings and environmental benefits. A number technological and institutional factors work in combination to lock farmers into production models requiring large amounts of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. They include crop varieties bred to thrive in artificially high nitrogen soil conditions, conventional tillage practices, restrictive financial arrangements, largely unenforced water quality laws, and non-diverse marketing outlets. These technological and institutional lock-ins are significant barriers to the adoption of alternative crop production practices that are less reliant upon synthetic nitrogen fertilizer.

Emerson’s Vision of America in John Ford’s "Stagecoach"

&#x0D; When Ralph Waldo Emerson addressed the Phi Betta Kappa Society in 1837 at Harvard College, his directives included the establishment of an American literary tradition derived from the unique experience of his fellow citizens in a new context that included a wild frontier. He sought to establish a different moral foundation built on a romantic sense of spiritual attachment to nature. This essay extends the new American grain and ground Emerson’s directives in a truly original and unique American artistic genre – the western film. My thesis is simply that John Ford’s elevation of the western film to artistic status with 1939’s Stagecoach is a uniquely appropriate fulfilment of Emerson’s call in the “American Scholar” for genre elevation, literary nationalism, romantic moral sentiment, and ultimately for confirming an American mythology that articulated and reinforced a native self-identity.&#x0D;