paragraph_text: Margaret Louise Cruikshank (born 1940) is an American lesbian feminist writer and academic. Cruikshank began teaching in 1968 and was one of the first American academics to be out during a time when gay rights was just a fledgling idea. Her research and educational work focuses on awareness and acceptance of lesbian academia and the exclusion of lesbian literature and criticism from traditional literature studies and women's studies. Her work has been published in "Gay Community News", "Radical Teacher", the "Journal of Homosexuality" and "The Advocate". Her anthologies "The Lesbian Path" (1980), "Lesbian Studies: Present and Future" (1982), and "New Lesbian Writing" (1984) helped to establish lesbian studies as a part of women's studies in the academy.

paragraph_text: An influential 2002 study by Matsuoka et al. has demonstrated that, rather than the multiple independent domestications model, all maize arose from a single domestication in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago. The study also demonstrated that the oldest surviving maize types are those of the Mexican highlands. Later, maize spread from this region over the Americas along two major paths. This is consistent with a model based on the archaeological record suggesting that maize diversified in the highlands of Mexico before spreading to the lowlands.

paragraph_text: Mark Arminski is an American rock concert poster artist born in 1950 in Detroit, Michigan. He began studying art at the Oakland Community College and pursued printmaking in stone lithography at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts. Rounding out his formal education was his stay at the Dynamic Graphics Education Foundation in Peoria, Illinois, where he studied computer generated art.

paragraph_text: Chinnakuyili is a small village situated in Coimbatore district in the state of Tamil Nadu, India (Bharat). Chinnakuyili village lies in the outskirts of Coimbatore City. It structures to the length and breadth - 3x5 km. It has a population of 604 men and 574 women. Chinnakuyili is a minor Panchayat included in Kallappalayam major Panchayat, with large source of income collected from the land taxes. People in this village are engaged in agriculture business and cultivation of maize, vegetables, cotton and coconuts. Most of the people are farmers mostly having cows and engaging in doing milk business. Milk farming is a hobby for all agriculture people for centuries in this village. Chinnakuyili is also known for its pleasant climate, nice people, peaceful atmosphere and nice wind flow.

paragraph_text: EC Bell (born February 9, 1946) is an American expressionist painter and successful gallery owner from Charleston, South Carolina. In his prolific career he has completed a provocative body of work that ranges from abstract to representational and celebrates every facet of the female body.

paragraph_text: Maize (/ meɪz / MAYZ; Zea mays subsp. mays, from Spanish: maíz after Taino: mahiz), also known as corn, is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. The leafy stalk of the plant produces pollen inflorescences and separate ovuliferous inflorescences called ears that yield kernels or seeds, which are fruits.

paragraph_text: The use of ground corn (maize) in cooking originated with Native Americans, who first cultivated the crop. Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole cooking introduced one of its main staples into Southern cuisine: corn, either ground into meal or limed with an alkaline salt to make hominy, in a Native American technology known as nixtamalization. Cornbread was popular during the American Civil War because it was very cheap and could be made in many different sizes and forms. It could be fashioned into high - rising, fluffy loaves or simply fried for a quick meal.

paragraph_text: Several plants native to the Americas have spread around the world, including potato, maize, tomato, and tobacco. Before 1500, potatoes were not grown outside of South America. By the 1840s, Ireland was so dependent on the potato that the proximate cause of the Great Famine was a potato disease. Potatoes eventually became an important staple of the diet in much of Europe, contributing to about 25% of the population growth in Afro - Eurasia between 1700 and 1900. Many European rulers, including Frederick the Great of Prussia and Catherine the Great of Russia, encouraged the cultivation of the potato.

paragraph_text: Over the course of thousands of years, American indigenous peoples domesticated, bred and cultivated a large array of plant species. These species now constitute 50–60% of all crops in cultivation worldwide. In certain cases, the indigenous peoples developed entirely new species and strains through artificial selection, as was the case in the domestication and breeding of maize from wild teosinte grasses in the valleys of southern Mexico. Numerous such agricultural products retain their native names in the English and Spanish lexicons.

paragraph_text: The March 1906 Scientific American article by American pioneer William E. Meacham explained the basic principle of hydrofoils and hydroplanes. Bell considered the invention of the hydroplane as a very significant achievement. Based on information gained from that article he began to sketch concepts of what is now called a hydrofoil boat. Bell and assistant Frederick W. "Casey" Baldwin began hydrofoil experimentation in the summer of 1908 as a possible aid to airplane takeoff from water. Baldwin studied the work of the Italian inventor Enrico Forlanini and began testing models. This led him and Bell to the development of practical hydrofoil watercraft.

paragraph_text: George Stavrinos (1948-1990) was an American illustrator. Born in Somerville, Massachusetts, he graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1969. After a year of study abroad he began working for Pushpin Studios.

paragraph_text: Marcel Grandjany was born in Paris and began the study of the harp at the age of eight with Henriette Renié. At age eleven, he was admitted to the Conservatoire de Paris, where he studied with Alphonse Hasselmans, winning the coveted Premier Prix at age thirteen.

paragraph_text: Coligny is a maize farming town situated next to the railway line between Lichtenburg and Johannesburg in North West Province of South Africa. The town is situated south-east of Lichtenburg.

paragraph_text: Lucid Druid is a Celtic fusion band that formed in Clearwater, Florida in 2003. The band self-proclaims their sound as "Traditional Celtic Music of the early 21st century," and "Eclectic World-Fusion Music," describing their multi-faceted and jam-induced music.

paragraph_text: Age of Feminine is the first album released by American rapper, Kellee Maize. It was recorded and released independently. The leading sound engineer was DJ Huggy, who was involved with the mixing and recording of each track for the album. To date, it has been downloaded over one hundred thousand times.

paragraph_text: The American River Review is a literary journal, first published in 1984, by students and faculty of American River College (ARC). An entirely student-produced magazine, the faculty at ARC facilitate in the financial and legal facets of production. Students are responsible for every creative aspect of production including writing, editing, accepting or rejecting submissions, final copy proofing, and the production of art, graphic design, and layout.

paragraph_text: Colin Dayan (also known as Joan Dayan), is the Robert Penn Warren Professor in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University, where she teaches American Studies, comparative literature, and the religious and legal history of the Americas. She has written extensively on prison law and torture, Caribbean culture and literary history, as well as on Haitian poetics, Edgar Allan Poe, and the history of slavery. After receiving her Ph.D. from the City University of New York Graduate Center in 1980, she taught at Princeton University, Yale University, the City University of New York, the University of Arizona, and the University of Pennsylvania.

paragraph_text: Traditionally Wampanoag people have been semi-sedentary, with seasonal movements between fixed sites in present - day southern New England. The men often traveled far north and south along the Eastern seaboard for seasonal fishing expeditions, and sometimes stayed in those distant locations for weeks and months at a time. The women cultivated varieties of the ``three sisters ''(the intercropping of maize, climbing beans, and squash) as the staples of their diet, supplemented by fish and game caught by the men. Each community had authority over a well - defined territory from which the people derived their livelihood through a seasonal round of fishing, planting, harvesting, and hunting. Because southern New England was thickly populated by indigenous peoples, hunting grounds had strictly defined boundaries.

paragraph_text: According to both indigenous American and European accounts and documents, American civilizations at the time of European encounter had achieved many accomplishments. For instance, the Aztecs built one of the largest cities in the world, Tenochtitlan, the ancient site of Mexico City, with an estimated population of 200,000. American civilizations also displayed impressive accomplishments in astronomy and mathematics. The domestication of maize or corn required thousands of years of selective breeding.

paragraph_text: Agriculture is dominated by the cultivation and sale of food crops such as cassava, peanuts, maize, sorghum, millet, sesame, and plantain. The annual real GDP growth rate is just above 3%. The importance of food crops over exported cash crops is indicated by the fact that the total production of cassava, the staple food of most Central Africans, ranges between 200,000 and 300,000 tonnes a year, while the production of cotton, the principal exported cash crop, ranges from 25,000 to 45,000 tonnes a year. Food crops are not exported in large quantities, but still constitute the principal cash crops of the country, because Central Africans derive far more income from the periodic sale of surplus food crops than from exported cash crops such as cotton or coffee.[citation needed] Much of the country is self-sufficient in food crops; however, livestock development is hindered by the presence of the tsetse fly.[citation needed]

Question: Where did maize cultivation begin in the region of which American studies is a facet?
Answer: southern Mexico