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teach the history of Minnesota or the Midwest," Lauck said. "By contrast, the University of Georgia ... has 10 people who teach the history of the South and Georgia."
• The group's efforts have skeptics, of course.
• American historian K. Austin Kerr, who retired 10 years ago from Ohio State University, rejects the idea that the Midwest's history is being lost.
• "Understand that the Journal of Southern History isn't ... devoted to the history of the South. It was a journal that authors who taught in the South published in," Kerr said. "There are ample opportunities for historians to study various topics and certainly many publication outlets."
• Part of the reason more historians don't study or write about the Midwest is because the region is hard to define, he said.
• Many of the region's 13 states -- Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin -- carry dual identities. For example, the western halves of Nebraska and the Dakotas are often defined as part of the American West, while the eastern parts are considered to be in the Midwest.
• Kerr was born in St. Louis, grew up in Iowa and went to college and taught in Ohio for nearly 40 years. He considers himself "a true-blooded Midwesterner."
• "But when I left for college in Ohio in 1955, people in my community in Iowa mulled that I was 'going back East to college,' " he said.
• Funding the effort will also pose a challenge, Kerr said. Faculties overall are shrinking, and there is less money going into liberal arts education and history departments.
• "How are you going to add what is going to be seen as new fields?" Kerr asked. "I think they're going to have a hard time."
• The group acknowledges as much, and worries that without donors to endow the new journal, it will collapse. They've been told the journal would need $500,000 to $1 million for the project to be sustainable.
• "I've put some feelers out," Lauck said. "We'll just keep our fingers crossed."
•

• MURRAY, Ky. (AP) -- Murray State University has narrowed its presidential search down to two finalists after a third person dropped out because of health issues. The next president is expected to be selected Wednesday.
• University Vice President of Communications Catherine Sivills told The Paducah Sun and Murray Ledger & Times that Robert "Bob" Davies, president of Eastern Oregon University in La Grande, Ore., and James Smith, president of Northern

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