Surviving and Thriving:
Gender, Justice, Power, and Place Making
Rural Women’s Studies Association 13th Triennial Conference, May 16-19, 2018
The Rural Women’s Studies Association‘s 13th Triennial Conference is fast approaching. It will be held May 16-19, 2018, with optional pre- and post-conference tours on May 16 and 20. We hope that you will join us at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, for this interdiciplinary gathering of scholars, activists, and others interested in rural women past and present. To whet your appetite, we are posting the conference program here.
I-1. Black Feminism in the Rural South
A Forgotten Black Nation: Gender and Place Making in the Rural American South, 1945-1960
Beatrice J. Adams, Rutgers University
Writing in Black and White: The Box Project, Rural Black Women and New Narratives of the Black Freedom Struggle in Mississippi, 1962 – 1968
Pamela Walker, Rutgers University
Black Power in Nacogdoches, Texas: The Activism of Helena Abdullah (formerly known as Helena Patton)
Jasmin C. Howard, Michigan State University
Dark Daughters of the South: The Proper Care and Feeding of Warrior Women
Carmen Lanos Williams, Arkansas State University
Chair: Valerie Grim, Indiana University
I-2. “New Woman”: Rural Women, Work and Culture beyond the Farm
“Dear People”: The Letters and Poetry of Harriette Cushman–The U.S. Extension Service’s First Poultry Specialist
Amy L. McKinney, Northwest College
Rural Spectacle in Three Comedies, 1890-1920 (Sis Hopkins, Old Homestead, & Blue Jeans)
Natasha Lueras, Indiana University-Bloomington
Progressive-Era Attempts to bring the “New Woman” Back to Rural Communities in New England: The Woman’s National Farm and Garden Association
Anne L. Moore, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Refugee from the Plantation South: Marie Wilson’s Flight from Privilege to Notoriety
Jeannie Whayne, University of Arkansas
Chair: Mary A. Larson, Edmon Low Library, Oklahoma State University
I-3. Rural Women and Rural Wealth
Rural Women: Tools in Agricultural Production but Servants in Profit Sharing
Rufus A. Oluwafemi, University of Abuja, Nigeria
Mariam El-Yakub, Oxfam, Bauchi, Nigeria
Discussion of Rural Wealth Creation: Concepts, Strategies, and Measures (USDA Economic Research Report 131, released March 2012), available at: https://www.rd.usda.gov/files/reports/rd-ERR131.pdf. Attendees will discuss report contents, the ways that gender affects the report’s conclusions, and the role of rural women in rural wealth generation.
Facilitator: Debra A. Reid, The Henry Ford
II-1. Farm Women and Crisis, 1970s and 1980s
An Eye View of the Furrow during the Farm Crisis
Debra A. Reid, The Henry Ford
Resourceful Nation Builders: Women, Co-operative Farming and Development Projects in Socialist Villages in 1970s Lindi, Tanzania
Husseina Dinani, University of Toronto-Scarborough
Farm Women in Crisis Times: Rethinking Women’s Roles in the Iowa of the 1980s
Pam Riney-Kehrberg, Iowa State University and President, Midwestern History Association
Chair: Steven Reschly, Truman State University
II-2. Split Visions: Readings by Three West Virginia Women Writers
A Native West Virginian, Life-Long Resident, and Fiction Writer
Natalie Sypolt, Pierpont Community & Technical College
A Ballet-Dancer, Non-Fiction Writer and North Dakota Transplant to West Virginia
Renée Nicholson, Programs for Multi- and Interdisciplinary Studies at West Virginia University
A Poet, Translator, Lyricist, and Photographer
Randi Ward, award-winning translator and founder of the Parkersburg Poetry Series
Facilitator: Tracey Hanshew, Washington State University—Tri-Cities
II-3 Geo-Spatial Analysis and Women Farmers
Geographic Analysis of Women Farm Operators in the United States
Elisabeth Garner, Pennsylvania State University
Topsy, Polly, & the Tin Lizzie, 1880-1930: Women on the Move & Claiming Space in the County
Pamela J. Snow Sweetser, University of Maine-Orono and educator, historian, fiber craftswoman, and wool grower
Spatio-Temporal Analysis in Seaweed Gathering and Marketing in Selected Coastal Areas in Ilocos Norte, Philippines
Susan G. Aquino with Zenaida M. Agngarayngay, Mariano Marcos State University, City of Batac, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
Chair: Rebecca Montgomery, Texas State University
Plenary Roundtable: Grandmothers and Granddaughters of the RWSA: What Generation Gap?
For thirty years, the Rural Women’s Studies Association has introduced historians to vibrant and important questions about the experiences of rural women across the globe. Scholars in this field have challenged assumptions about the theory and history of gender, race, environment, politics, family, economics, and community. They have encouraged historians to confront their urban/ metro-normative gaze when confronting contradictions and continuities in rural spaces. These scholars have also offered exciting possibilities for area studies, interdisciplinary studies, and scholars of sexuality and queer theory. The “Granddaughters” seek to respond to the “Grandmothers” of RWSA, a generation of scholars whose pivotal work has provided the foundation for future scholarship. Each will note how the “Grandmothers” influenced their understandings of topics about rural women and offer commentary about the future of scholarship in the field.
Granddaughters:
Margaret Weber, Iowa State University
Kathryn Engle, University of Kentucky
Emily Prifogle, Princeton University
Sara Egge, Centre College
Facilitator, Jenny Barker-Devine, Illinois College
III-1 Rural Women as Others “Saw” Them
“Go to the Lands of Darkness”: The Migration of Single Women on the Illinois Frontier, 1820-1850
Jenny Barker-Devine, Illinois College
Searching for Bell: Finding A Woman in a Man’s Diary
Daniel Samson, Brock University, St Catharines, Ontario
Chair: Catharine Wilson, University of Guelph, Ontario
III-2 “Born in the [Rural] USA”: Starting the Conversation about Rural Health
Discussion of evidence documenting reproductive experiences, i.e., Women’s Reproductive History Alliance (http://www.womensreproductivehistoryalliance.org), co-directed by Jennifer Hill, Montana State University.
Discussion of two news reports on maternal health care in rural America. See Dana Fine Maron, “Maternal Health Care is Disappearing in Rural America,” Scientific American (15 February 2017) and Jilian Mincer, “More Hospital Closings in Rural America add Risk for Pregnant Women,” Reuters (18 July 2017).
Audience Discussion—Facilitator: Debra A. Reid, The Henry Ford
III-3 Rural Action, Inc.: Local Non-Profit Organization Dedicated to Revitalizing Appalachian Ohio
Rural Action (RA) was founded in 1992 as an organization focused on using the strategies of Asset Based Community Development to address the endemic issues of poverty and lack of opportunity in Appalachian Ohio. Rural Action utilizes a triple bottom line strategy in its programming—“Good for the Economy, The Community and the Environment”. One key partner of RA is Women Grow Ohio (WGO), a network of Women in Agriculture started by long time RA member Annie Warmke of Blue Rock Station in Muskingum County. Women Grow Ohio organizes women to women trainings and networks focused on the concept of the woman as the farmer, not the helpmate. They are a volunteer based group whose goals are Networking, Peer to Peer Education, Promotion and Sustainability. Their mission is to demonstrate the important work of Ohio women in feeding their families and others in our great state. RA staff and members of Women Grow Ohio will discuss their efforts to support women in agriculture.
Susi Acord, Andrea Reany, Katelyn Eilbeck, and Tom Redfern, Rural Action
Evening program: Sue Massek of the Reel World String Band (Kentucky’s feminist hillbilly band) and her
performance, “Appalachian Women, A Herstory of Oppression and Resistance.”
Friday, 18 May 2018
7:30 am – Registration opens – Living Learning Center (LLC), Ohio University
Before 8:30 am Breakfast (based on the meal option you select)
8:30 to 10:00 am – CONCURRENT SESSION IV
IV-1 Rural Women’s Activism through Oppression
Rural Women’s Activism: The Powerful Impact of the Resolutions and Campaigns of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes of England, Wales, and the Islands
Margaret Thomas-Evans, Indiana University East
Farm Institutes and Rural Women: The Case of Rural New York State, 1900-1940s
Mary Ellen Zuckerman, State University of New York- Brockport
Reformers in the Backwater: The Housekeepers Club of Coconut Grove, 1891-1957
Maureen S. Thompson, Florida International University
Strengthening the Status of Farm Women in Farming in India: The Changing Role of Institutions
Chandan Kumar Panda and Siya Ram Singh, Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour, Bhagalpur, India
Chair: Cherisse R. Jones-Branch, Arkansas State University
IV-2 Panel Discussion: Researching Rural Women–Sources, Libraries, Scholarship, and Material Culture
Three experts will share their knowledge of primary and secondary sources. This addresses RWSA’s goal to “promote and advance farm and rural women’s/gender studies in a historical perspective by encouraging research, [and] promoting scholarship.”
Tips and Tricks to Finding Records in Archives and Special Collections
Anne L. Moore, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Identifying a 3-D Object in a 2-D Source
Debra A. Reid, The Henry Ford
Using Library Finding Aids (library catalogs, databases, citation analysis, and text mining) to Find Primary and Secondary Sources Related to Rural Women
Sara Morris, University of Kansas
Audience Discussion—Facilitator: Sara Morris, University of Kansas
IV-3 Rural Femininity on Display
Ontario Dairy Princesses and the Cultural Identity of Women in Dairy Farming
in the Postwar Period
Jodey Nurse-Gupta, University of Waterloo; University of Guelph
“Country Girls Are Whisky in a Teacup”: Crafting Rural Femininities and Building Online Community in the Contemporary U.S. Fashion Marketplace
Holly M. Kent, University of Illinois-Springfield
Stomp, Stomp! Shake, Shake!: Cheerleaders, Dancers, Steppers and Majorettes — Black Girls, Movement and Embodiments of Femininity
Dani Williams-Jones, University of California, Los Angeles
Conservative Commemoration and Progressive Protest in the Culture Wars (1975-1995)
Cynthia Culver Prescott, University of North Dakota
Chair: Catharine Wilson, University of Guelph, Ontario
V-1 Rural Feminism
Plotting Resistance: Rural Suffrage, the Petition and Empire in Manitoba
Roland Sawatzky, Curator of History, The Manitoba Museum, Winnipeg
Negotiating Political Difference and Feminism in Rural North Dakota
Ashlee Moser, Brandeis University
The Rural Roots of Feminism in Higher Education
Kelly C. Sartorius, University of Kansas, Lawrence
Heritage Feminism: Exploring New Approaches to Heritage Studies in Nigeria
Elochukwu Nwankwo, University of Nigeria, Nsukka
Chair: Amy L. McKinney, Northwest College
V-2 Women Procuring Food and Preparing Food in Rural America
Killing in the Name: Family, Food, and Power in the American Midwest
Sara Egge, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky
“Woman’s Province”: Maine Women Creating Identity in the Kitchen
Rachel Snell, University of Maine-Orono
Women, Energy and Environment: The Case of Rural Canada, 1880-1950
Ruth Sandwell, University of Toronto
Chair: Jodey Nurse-Gupta, University of Waterloo; University of Guelph, Ontario
V-3 Women and Rural Business Strategies
Impact of Safety Net Program on Women Headed Household: Climate Change Adaptation vs Poverty Reduction Strategies in Northern Ethiopia
Abadi Teklehaimanot, Mekelle University, Mekelle, Ethiopia
The Consequences of the History of Gender Inequity for Rural Family Business Succession Planning
Diane McKenzie, University of Lethbridge, Alberta
Impact of Microcredit on Tunisian Women Empowerment: Evidence in Priority Regions
Lamia Mokaddem, University of Tunis El Manar
in absentia – Henda Kharoub, University of Tunis El Manar
Chair: Margaret Thomas-Evans, Indiana University East
Plenary: Chief Glenna Wallace, Eastern Shawnee Nation
Glenna Wallace is an educator and the first woman to be elected Chief of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma. Following the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the U.S. government forced the Shawnee to leave their Ohio Valley home for reservations in Oklahoma and Kansas. In speaking about the relationship between the Shawnee and Ohio, Chief Glenna notes: “We are still here in a certain way. We are here in our hearts.”
VI-1 – Rural Women and Organizational Activism within and beyond Borders
Presenting Production and Performing Plenty: Auxiliary Advocacy as a Gendered Performance Discourse after World War II
Rebecca Shimoni Stoil, Johns Hopkins University
Gendering the Global Political Order: American Farm Women and Transnational Rural Women’s Organizations, 1939-1960
Nancy Berlage, Texas State University, San Marcos
Feminist Popular Education for Social Change in Kenya: Preserving Indigenous Knowledge Systems
Catherine Cutcher, Ohio University
Multi-Dimensional Stakeholders’ Partnership: The Gender Transformative (GTM) Model in SDG Implementation
Olubunmi Ashimolowo, Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Nigeria, and Gender Development Initiative
Chair: Cherisse R. Jones-Branch, Arkansas State University
VI-2 Road Trips, Religion, and Rituals: Gendered Practices and Performances of Pentecostals, Amish, and Agribusiness
Road Trips and Religion: Gender and Ritual in Pentecostal Camp Meetings, 1940-1960
Linda Ambrose, Laurentian University
Preparing the Celebrations and Ceremonies: Amish Women’s Religious and Family Rituals in the 1930s
Katherine Jellison, Ohio University
All Cooped Up: Gender and Agribusiness in Postwar America
Margaret Weber, Iowa State University
Chair: Beth E. Graybill, Millersville University
VI-3 “Sowing the Seeds of Love”: Promoting Transgender Inclusivity and Visibility in Policies and Training Programs in the Heartland
An LGBTQ archive at the Civil Rights Heritage Center in South Bend, Indiana: A TREES, Inc. Resource
Jamie Wagman, Saint Mary’s College, South Bend, Indiana
TREES, Inc.: Transgender Education for Small Town and Rural America
Meghan Buell, Founder of TREES (Transgender Resource, Education and Enrichment Services)
Developing an Educational Presentation for TREES about Violence Prevention and Support Services
Jordan Lolmaugh, St. Mary’s College
Reviewing and Revising USDA Employment Policies and Procedures to Ensure Inclusivity and Provide Best Practices for TREES, Inc., Training of Federal and State Agricultural Employees
Alex Shambery, St. Mary’s College
Chair: Mary A. Larson, Edmon Low Library, Oklahoma State University
VII-1 Stories
Looking Forward, Looking Back: Evolving Personal Views of the Dust Bowl
Mary A. Larson, Edmon Low Library, Oklahoma State University
Does Oral History Affect the Life Satisfaction of Older African American Women?
Patricia A. Wilkerson, Arkansas State University
Ten Ladies of the Deep South: Stories of Triumph by the Community of African American Women of Sheeplo, Mississippi
Joseph Cates, Sullivan Museum & History Center, Norwich University
Old Indigent Women in Contemporary Nigerian Mythic Consciousness: Nollywood’s Witchery and Implications for Rural Women
Stephen Temitope David, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
Victim Blaming: Deconstructing Rape Culture in Rural Communities of Southwest Nigeria
Phebean A. Adekunle, Oregon State University
Chair: Tracey Hanshew, Washington State University—TriCities
VII-2 Panel Discussion: Culture, Indigenous Women and Indigenous Development in South African Communities
Presenters will identify and contextualize key issues, concerns and trends affecting the livelihood of women in rural locations and larger communities in South Africa, with an emphasis on the ways that uneducated women contribute to the community positively as entrepreneurs and as preservers of cultural heritage. Presenters will address: 1) How do cultural practices, beliefs and values shape livelihood; 2) Empowerment and women-inherited livelihood; 3) Women’s livelihood in colonial and post-colonial era
Panelists:
Nokwanda Yoliswa Nzuza, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa
Adetola Elizabeth Oyewo, Brainstorm Travel Consult, PTY, Durban, and University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa
Gbadebo Gbemisola, Independent Researcher and Brainstorm Travel Consult, PTY, Durban, South Africa
Chair and Facilitator: Samuel Uwem Umoh, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa
VII-3 Panel Discussion: Appalachian Feminisms & Rurality–Place, Place Making, and Praxis
This panel builds on previous sessions at Appalachian Studies Association (ASA) conferences exploring the concept of “Appalachian Feminism(s).” Presenters will examine gender and place through place-based theorizing, organizing, and activism in Appalachia. Our respective experiences and scholarship consider material, performative, and symbolic aspects of Appalachian Feminism(s). We represent an intergenerational mix of academic, community, and activist perspectives who have benefitted from Sally Maggard’s foundational articles on Appalachian gender and women’s studies and analyses of Appalachian women’s resistance.
Panelists:
Sally Maggard, West Virginia University Tammy Clemons, University of Kentucky
Zada Komara, University of Kentucky Jordan Laney, Virginia Tech
Convener: Kathryn Engle, University of Kentucky
VIII-1 Women, Land, and the State: Perspectives from Scandinavian History
Inheriting Daughters, Undivided Farms, and Common Fields in Upper Dalarna, Sweden, 1730–1930
Grey Osterud, Independent Historian, USA
Harvest Failure, Farm Indebtedness and Foreclosure, Gendered and Generational Dissent, and Emigration from Torstuna, Sweden, to Bishops Hill, Illinois, in the Mid-Nineteenth Century
Iréne A. Flygare, Stiftelsen Upplandsmuseet, Uppsala, Sweden
Marja Erikson, Uppsala University, Sweden
Women’s Homesteading and Land Purchase on Indian Reservations on the Northern Great Plains, 1887-1934
Karen V. Hansen and Samantha Leonard, Brandeis University
Agrarian Women and the Construction of the Two-Breadwinner Welfare State in Interwar Sweden
Lena Sommestad, Governor, Province of Halland, Sweden
Chair: Debra A. Reid, The Henry Ford
VIII-2 Rural Women and Their Work
Yoruba Heritage, Identity and Emblem in the Adire (indigo-dyed) Textile Industry in Nigeria: Case of Women Entrepreneurs in Kemta Market, Abeokuta
Adetola Elizabeth Oyewo, Brainstorm Travel Consult, PTY, Durban, and University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa
Gbadebo Gbemisola, Independent Researcher and Brainstorm Travel Consult, PTY, Durban, South Africa
Indigenous Communities, Livelihood and Annang Women of Nigeria: Livelihood based in the Raffia Hookeri and Oil Palm (Elaeis guineensis)
Samuel Uwem Umoh and Nokwanda Yoliswa Nzuza University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa
Questioning the Gendered Nature of Women’s Work: A study of North Eastern Region of India
Bornali Borah, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
Chair: Margaret Thomas-Evans, Indiana University East
VIII-3 Roundtable: Creating Dawn Jewell, Appalachian Woman and Narrator of Trampoline
Robert Gipe, author of Trampoline: An Illustrated Novel, and students in the Appalachian Program at Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College (SEKCTC) will discuss their collaborative writing projects, including the students’ influence on Trampoline: An Illustrated Novel that features Appalachian woman Dawn Jewell. Robert Gipe also is a producer of the Higher Ground community performances in Harlan County, Kentucky, and the session will also address the collaboration of Robert and SEKCTC students on a play in progress about Appalachian women.
Chair & Facilitator: Rachel Terman, Ohio University
PLENARY Nikki Taylor, Driven toward Madness (Ohio University Press, 2016)
Introduction by Terri L. Snyder, California State University – Fullerton
Nikki Taylor is Professor of History and Department Chair at Howard University. Professor Taylor’s third book, Driven Toward Madness: The Fugitive Slave Margaret Garner and Tragedy on the Ohio (Ohio University Press, 2016), is a biography of Margaret Garner, an enslaved wife and mother who in 1856 escaped from slavery in northern Kentucky with her entire family. Garner’s reaction to her family’s recapture served as the inspiration for Toni Morrison’s classic novel Beloved.
IX-1 Discussion Forum: Sharing Strategies for Creative Approaches to Community Development & Place Making
How do we turn buildings, roads and geographic features into vibrant places that nurture and support human collectivities? How do we build community through engaging with others and with our unique environments? This discussion forum provides a space for conference attendees to share their personal and local approaches to place-making. Forum hosts are especially interested in hearing from participants about context-specific strategies for:
Developing and implementing community improvement or preservation projects
Sustaining community engagement over time
Making the work inclusive of different kinds of people
After mapping the opportunities and challenges we have in common, we will facilitate a discussion of next steps in place-based community revitalization that attends particularly to the things that make life beautiful.
Discussion Forum Participants:
Barbara Bradbury, Hurricane Run Farm, a host WWOOF farm (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) in southern Ohio; Shawnee State University
Katherine Borland, Center for Folklore Studies, The Ohio State University
Coordinator and Facilitator: Cassie Patterson, Center for Folklore Studies and the Folkore Archives, The Ohio State University
IX-2 Rural Women and Their Places
Race, Place, and the Biographical Turn: Priscilla Baltimore and Brooklyn, Illinois
Sharon E. Wood, University of Nebraska at Omaha
USCT Women and Community in the Post-Civil War Era
Kelly Jones, Austin Peay State University
“Until the Lord Come Get Me, It Burn Down, or the Next Storm Blow it Away”: Principles of Place Preservation in Deep East Texas’ African American Vernacular Landscapes
Andrea Roberts, Texas A &M University
Women at the Center and on the Edges of Ontario’s Reciprocal Work Bees, 1860-1920
Catharine Wilson, University of Guelph
Chair, Terri L. Snyder, California State University – Fullerton
IX-3 Panel Discussion: Rethinking and Remaking Place as Resistance
This facilitated, participatory session will address rural women’s experiences of cultural and institutional hegemony. We seek to demystify the operation of hegemony, to know it when we observe or experience it, and to develop and implement strategies of resistance. We will highlight current efforts to decolonize rural spaces by reclaiming/remaking/revaluing local culture, prioritizing the commons, and safe-guarding the common good. We situate efforts in an evolving ecofeminism that connects, both ideologically and structurally, the renewed and virulent patriarchal assault on women and the environment.
Panelists:
Angie Carter, Michigan Technological University
Rebecca Lampman, Rural activist who writes regularly for farm publications about her commitment to the caring practice of agriculture
Betty Wells, Iowa State University
Chair: Jenny Barker-Devine, Illinois College
X-1 Rural Women Educators
Anna M. P. Strong: A Rural Arkansas Educational Activist, 1884-1966
Cherisse R. Jones-Branch, Arkansas State University
The Wyoming Years of Schoolmarm, Superintendent, and Homesteader Edith K.O. Clark
Ginny Kilander, University of Wyoming
Margery Burns is Tilting at Windmills: Rural Schools in a Modern America
Emily Prifogle, Princeton University
Chair: Amy L. McKinney, Northwest College
X-2 Rural Health Care
“Everything that Could be Done for Negroes Was Done”: Juliette Derricotte, Nina Johnson, and the Violence of Jim Crow Medicine
Yulonda Eadie Sano, Alcorn State University
“If you go to her home you know where she is coming from”: An Oral History of the Rural Birth Control Movement in Maine, 1967 to 1983
Mazie Hough, University of Maine-Orono
Exploring Hispanic Health Paradox among Women in Texas Colonias
Sheren G. Sanders, Alcorn State University
Chair and Facilitator: Joan Jensen, New Mexico State University
X-3 Roundtable Discussion: Organizing Rural Women in Today’s Political Climate
Rural women have long engaged in politics. Women in northwestern Missouri invited Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to speak for women’s suffrage. More recently, Black women in the South worked with little recognition to mobilize rural residents in the push for civil rights. Barbara Pini, Berit Brandth, and Jo Little’s Feminism and Ruralities (2015) and Jenny Barker-Devine’s On Behalf of the Family Farm (2013) examine the push made by other rural women, with a focus on the way they organized and what they fought for. Recently, renewed political urgency has led many women from behind their computer screens and away from the relative safety and anonymity of Facebook activism to real-world contentious, and loud public activism.
Panelists:
Rural Women and Politicized Social Movements
Jamie Campbell, Tulane University
Comparison of Historic Activism and Current Rural Women’s Political Motivation, Issues, Tactics, Challenges, Accomplishments, and Failures
Carol S. Palmer, Canby, Oregon
Mobilizing Democrats in Missouri and Texas: The challenges of Liberal Organizing in Rural, Conservative America
Elyssa B. Ford, Northwest Missouri State University, Maryville; and
Kelly McMichael, American Public University
Chair and Facilitator: Elyssa B. Ford, Northwest Missouri State University
Women of Appalachia Spoken Word and Music Artists
Kari Gunter-Seymour (Ohio) Poetry Tonja Matney Reynolds (Ohio) Story
Becky Code (Ohio) Story Lisa M. Pursley (West Virginia) Poetry
Rose M. Smith (Ohio) Poetry Renee Stewart (Ohio) Song