Upcoming Virtual Events

Posted on July 25, 2024 by Jennifer Helton

Announcing our latest endeavor – our RWSA virtual programs! At our 2024 Conference, Allison Mitchell and Elyssa Ford graciously agreed to become the founding members of our virtual programming committee, and they are excited to announce a slate of upcoming events.

Rural Women's Studies Association logo; a yellow sun above a green field with a woman's head in the center

There will be a monthly crafting hour and quarterly programs. Please see the descriptions below for more information. We will be sending out more focused calls for participants for the January and April events in the coming months. In the meantime, we hope to see some of you at the monthly virtual crafting hour!

Monthly Social Hour: Virtual Crafting, 3rd Tuesdays, 7-8pm (central time in the USA; daylight savings time)

  • Join fellow RWSA members for a social hour of crafting. Bring any project you are working on (pottery, knitting, jewelry making, quilting, etc.) and chat with folks. This is a great opportunity to connect with other members in a relaxing environment.
  • Dates: July 16th, August 20th, September 17th, October 15th, November 19th, December 17th
  • Contact Elyssa Ford (ebford at nwmissouri.edu) or Allison Mitchell (allimitch04 at gmail.com) for the Zoom link to join this event!

Annual Virtual Programming

October – Talking in Conversation: Bringing Academics and Professionals Together

  • RWSA aims to encourage research, promote existing and forthcoming scholarship, and establish and maintain links with contemporary farm and rural women’s organizations. In support of the latter, RWSA is launching an annual virtual program where we invite academics and working professionals in the field to come together and talk in conversation in a virtual program.
  • The first iteration of this new virtual programming session will take place in October 2024, and all RWSA members are invited to join the session and participate in an engaging dialogue. For information about this event will be posted on social media and included in the next RWSA newsletter.

January – Annual Recent Book Discussion

  • Did you have a book published in 2024? RWSA is putting out a call for participants in a virtual recent book discussion. This is a great opportunity to promote your work to RWSA members and discuss your work alongside other recent scholarship. To be considered, there will be a call for participants who will be asked to submit the URL to their book information (ie, press website) and a short bio statement or 1 pg CV by November 1st 2024.
  • The first iteration of the virtual book discussion will take place in January 2025, and all RWSA members are invited to join the session and participate in an engaging dialogue. The formal call for participants will be forthcoming in future months.

 April – Rural Women beyond North America

  • RWSA would like to highlight the work of its members located outside of North America. To be considered, RWSA members working outside of North America who would like to share their current projects on rural women, will be asked to submit a proposal by February 01, 2024. Proposals should include a 250 word abstract of the project and a short bio or 1 page CV. The selection committee especially wants to encourage submissions from RWSA members who were not able to participate in the 2024 conference. 
  • The first iteration of this new virtual programming session will take place in April 2025, and all RWSA members are invited to join the presentation and participate in the discussion. The formal call for participants will be forthcoming in future months.

July – Professional Tips & Tricks

  • This virtual program, offered annually in July, will provide participants with tips & tricks to help RWSA members promote themselves and their work. The first iteration of this new virtual programming session will take place in July 2025, and all RWSA members are invited to join the presentation and participate in the discussion.
  • Possible topics may include:
    • Writing for (and speaking to) different audiences
    • Creating an edited collection
    • Editing a special issue for a journal
    • Working with a trade press
    • How to promote your book…and yourself!

We hope you can join us at these new programs as we work to build our RWSA community and make our organization useful for our members. If you have other ideas for programming, comment below, or share them directly with Elyssa and Allison.

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Write for the RWSA Blog!

Posted on July 17, 2024 by Jennifer Helton

We are always looking for submissions to our blog. We accept everything from book excerpts to informal reflections about research, activism, and rural life. Our blog posts typically range from 200 to 2,000 words in length and photos or other visuals are appreciated. Send contributions and queries to Jennifer Helton, RWSA blog editor, at jhelton at ohlone.edu

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RWSA Virtual Craft Hour with RWSA Members Beginners are Welcome Monthly 3rd Tuesdays 7-8 pm CST (USA) email Elyssa Ford ebford@nwmissouri.edu to register

We had such a great time great time hanging out at Arkansas State at our conference in May that we decided RWSA members need to get together more often!

Join us for our new monthly crafting hour. Our first session will be held July 16 at 7-8 pm Central Daylight Time (USA). For those of you in the US, that is 8-9 Eastern, 6-7 Mountain, and 5-6 Pacific. A great way to end your work day!

Email Elyssa Ford at EBFORD at nwmissouri.edu for the zoom link.

Going forward, we will meet on the 3rd Tuesday of each month from 7-8 pm Central Time.

We’ll work on a craft project, chat about our scholarship, and think of new ways to build our community. Bring your sewing, crocheting or knitting along! Share photos of your chickens, flowerbeds, or latest woodworking project! Beginners welcome.

Posted on July 9, 2024 by Jennifer Helton | Leave a comment

The Amarillo Philharmonic Club and Women Composers of the Texas Panhandle

Posted on May 8, 2024 by admin

Kimberly Hieb, West Texas A&M University

Editor’s Note: We are highlighting scholarship that will be featured at our triennial conference May 14-19, 2024.

Amarillo, Texas is located in the heart of the Texas Panhandle, roughly 300 miles from any major metropolitan center. Oklahoma City lies to the east, Albuquerque to the west, Denver to the North, and Dallas-Fort Worth to the southeast. Citizens of this town, which was established first by ranchers and cattlemen in the 1880s and then by oil money in the 1920s and remains located so far from any other metropolitan center, have fostered an individual and rich musical culture since the early twentieth century. 

The Amarillo Philharmonic Club was founded in 1905 and one of the fourteen original Federated Music Clubs in the United States. This club, like many others documented by Linda Whitesett (1997), Karen Blair (1994), and Marion Wilson Kimber (2019), educated its membership about the mechanics of music and introduced them to composers and repertoire from both across the country and the globe. Programs and newspaper articles recounting the activities of the Amarillo Philharmonic Club in the 1930s, though, reveal the club to be a particularly strong advocate for homegrown talent. Concerts and programs frequently featured works by local, female composers, often setting texts by local women poets. This paper documents this advocacy work, which helped launch the career of at least one Panhandle native, Radie Britain, whose compositions often reflected her West Texas heritage and were later played all over the United States throughout her career.

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Before They Had Bootstraps: A Case Study of Intergenerational Black Women’s Activism in Rural Arkansas, 1880 – 1944

Posted on May 1, 2024 by admin

Valandra, University of Arkansas, USA

Editor’s Note: We are highlighting scholarship that will be featured at the RWSA 15th Triennial conference in Jonesboro, Arkansas, USA, May 15-19, 2024.

The late activist and actor Harry Belafonte clarified that he was an activist before he became an actor stating, “I don’t know how you can ask citizens of color who were born into poverty when did you become an activist. You really become an activist the day you were born because your whole lust, thrust, and effort is to get out of poverty, and that requires a lot of work.” For rural Black women living through poverty, everyday efforts to provide for the needs of their families are the embodiment of activism. This is particularly true because black success inevitably ignites white legislative, civil, and physical hostility. Through slavery, reconstruction, Black Codes, and Jim Crow, rural Black farming families consistently strived to achieve economic, social, educational, and political success in the midst of white violence. African American literature scholar, Koritha Mitchell, refers to this white violence as “know-your-place aggression” and the denial of Black citizenship.  She describes the deep sense of success and belonging that Black Americans experience and cultivate amid “know-your-place-aggression” as homemade citizenship. This oral paper examines the everyday activism and achievements of four generations of Black Arkansas women to cultivate and embrace homemade citizenship in their words and deeds while facing white aggression within the historical context of slavery, reconstruction, Black Codes, and Jim Crow. Their attainment stories demonstrate the power of intergenerational faith, family preservation, mobility, education, and property as pathways from poverty to the creation of generational wealth. 

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Stolen Moments from the Ernst Farm: Letters to a Texan in the CCC

Posted on April 24, 2024 by admin

William V. Scott, Texas Tech University

Editor’s Note: We are highlighting scholarship that will be featured at our triennial conference May 14-19, 2024.

In the Summer of 1934, a young man by the name of Eddie L. Bell enrolled in the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal employment endeavor for young men. In May 1934, Bell was sent to his first assignment, when he was transferred to New Mexico. The young Bell was twenty-four years of age and was kept in touch with the life in South Texas, one that constantly communicated with Bell was his sweetheart, Nellie E. Ernst. Ernst wrote Bell weekly and sometimes more often. Ernst’s letters are a wealth of information pertaining to a productive woman-ran South Texas family farm in rural Bexar County. In her attempt to keep her love in touch with the daily occurrences of farm life and community in the Roosevelt era. Ernst letters include numbers and vivid descriptions of the farm’s livestock production which including both cattle and hogs, a dairy operation, and a variety of poultry which are followed from brooding to the table, and often market. The Ernst Farm’s vegetable production would also follow a similar comparison, which details from field through the processes of preserving and canning. The 406-acre Ernst Farm on the outskirts of San Antonio, was almost completely operated by strong-willed rural women, as a mother, three sisters and a granddaughter make a productive farm through the Depression and World War II.

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Female Agriculture Undergraduates Perception And Use of Contraceptives in Federal University Of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Nigeria

Posted on April 17, 2024 by admin

Ashimolowo Olubunmi

Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria, and Executive Director, Gender Development Initiative

Editor’s Note: We are highlighting scholarship that will be featured at the RWSA 15th Triennial conference in Jonesboro, Arkansas, USA, May 15-19, 2024.

Contraception is defined as the deliberate prevention of conception through the use of various devices and surgical procedures. The study assess the perception and use of contraceptives among female agriculture undergraduates in the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB). Simple random sampling technique was used to select 350 female respondents. Data was collected with the aid of questionnaire and analyzed using frequency counts, percentages, mean, standard deviation and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Results show that their mean age was 20±2.856 years. The method of contraceptives used among the respondents were pills (x=0.29) and calendar method (x=0.51). Finding reveals that almost half (47.7%) of the respondents had favourable perception towards contraceptives. The constraints to contraceptive use among the respondents were fear of side effects (x=1.46) and contraception can cause irregular period. The result of the hypotheses shows that there is significant difference (p≤0.05) in the use of contraceptives across the marital category (F=28.954) and  use of contraceptives across levels (F=11.686). The study concludes use of contraceptives, severe contraints and its favourable perception among the respondents. It was therefore recommended that the ministry of health should create more awareness campaigns to enhance favorable perception and use of contraception.

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Activism and Advocacy in Three Women’s Organizations in New Zealand

Posted on April 11, 2024 by admin

Margaret Thomas Evans 

Indiana University East, USA

Editor’s Note: We are highlighting scholarship that will be featured at the RWSA 15th Triennial conference in Jonesboro, Arkansas, USA, May 15-19, 2024.

New Zealand became the first self-governing country in the world in which women gained the right to vote in parliamentary elections as authorized by an act of parliament in 1893 (https://www.archives.govt.nz/discover-our-stories/womens-suffrage-petition). This presentation explores activism and advocacy work and how it is rhetorically presented in three women’s organizations in New Zealand: Rural Women New Zealand (RWNZ), The New Zealand Federation of Women’s Institutes (NZFWI), and National Council of Women of New Zealand (NCWNZ). Based on their websites and social media, two are clearly political and involved in gender rights while the third appears to be primarily focused on social activities and community events. 

NCWNZ, established in 1896, has historically promoted “improvements to the quality of life of women, families and the community.”  Their work has shaped the society and economics of New Zealand. They are currently focusing on a gender equal New Zealand (https://www.ncwnz.org.nz/about).

RWNZ, founded in 1925, began as the women’s group associated with the Farmer’s Union and thus has a rural focus. The group now serves as “an authoritative voice on health services, education, environment and social issues in the rural sector” focusing on empowering women and girls (https://ruralwomennz.nz/about-rwnz/). 

NZFWI, begun in 1921, claims not to be political and primarily provides social activities for its members. However, a Facebook post from October 2022 indicates that the members celebrated equal representation in Parliament; while this shows progress for gender equality, it represents a binary.  Although not necessarily politically active, they clearly value gender rights and also support various charitable causes via fundraising (https://www.wi.org.nz/). 

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Spatio-Temporal Analysis in Seaweed Gathering and Marketing in Selected Coastal Areas in Ilocos Norte Philippines

Posted on April 3, 2024 by admin

Susan G. Aquino and Zenaida M. Agngarayngay

Research Directorate, Mariano Marcos State University, Philippines

Editor’s Note: We are highlighting scholarship that will be featured at the RWSA 15th Triennial conference in Jonesboro, Arkansas, USA, May 15-19, 2024.

Space-time accessibility measures explicitly acknowledge the importance of gender roles as a key social and spatial constraint for women, constraining their behavior, limiting their activities and confining them to a smaller geographic area. The core of this study is to use an accounting framework on gender roles in the seaweed fishery for a rational resource management and promoting gender sensitive seaweed fishery systems for sustainable community transformation and development. It will map out human activities to depict the differentiated roles that men and women significantly play over time and space, that is, the spatio-temporal model in seaweed gathering and marketing. Descriptive statistics, frequency counts, percentages and means were used to treat the data. 

While both gender can gather seaweeds in the supra and intertidal zones, only the males travel the subtidal zone. With a lesser time spent, the females are confined in the nearby supra and intertidal zone. This is because of the time spent and the risk involved in travelling the subtidal zone. It proved once more in the attitude of the respondents that “man are more risk taker” There is this gap in seaweed gathering at the subtidal zone. Still a men’s domain because they go there by boat.

While men are the sole seaweed gatherers at the subtidal zone, women take the burden in sorting, classifying and cleaning the gathered seaweeds and ultimately drying the seaweeds.

Further in-depth study in the spatio temporal activities should be done and other household members should be included in the study.

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Socialism in “Trump Country”: A “Yallternative” View

Posted on March 27, 2024 by admin

Kaceylee Klein

English and Law, University of California, Davis

Editor’s Note: We are highlighting scholarship that will be featured at the RWSA 15th Triennial conference in Jonesboro, Arkansas, USA, May 15-19, 2024.

The Appalachian mountain range is a weird area full of weird people. Repeatedly, it is described, at best, as peculiar. Its people have been deemed backwards “white trash.” However, the relationship of Appalachia to race and class has never been simple—at times distanced from whiteness like the Jackson Whites and at other times used as the idyllic, hardworking Anglo-Saxon. Most histories completely ignore the large groups of non-white people who call the area home and have simplified the issues of the region as just racial or just class based, but never both. Appalachia has been a place in the dominant American imagination that could hold outcasts, but in turn could never be assimilated, never folded into the dominant hegemony. One of America’s favorite pastimes is constructing and re-constructing Appalachia from the outside, which often simplifies the intricacies of race and class in the area. Rather than continue to dichotomize Appalachia, scholars should take cues from the youth on TikTok, and allow activists from the area to determine how they will be represented and what value that will garner for them. 

This paper is divided into four sections: a brief history of the limits of whiteness; an overview of socialist movements that arose in response to coal industry; the resurgence of (gendered and classed) dialogue about Appalachia surrounding the election of Donald Trump; and finally an application of the prior concepts to the social media platform TikTok, focusing on a popular transgender woman in the “yallternative” community. 

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