Call for Presentations and Papers—DEADLINE EXTENDED to 1 June 2023

Posted on April 12, 2023 by ccprescott

Call for Presentations and Papers

Gendered Advocacy and Activism, Shaping Institutions and Communities 

Rural Women’s Studies Association Triennial Conference

Hosted by Arkansas State University, Jonesboro, Arkansas, USA

May 15-19, 2024

Recent challenges to civil rights in various locations internationally bring to mind equity in rural communities which has a separate set of challenges to those of urban areas. Yet, historically activism rooted in rural areas can result in broader change on both regional and national levels. Challenges activists face in pursuing change include a conglomeration of isolation, underfunded education, failing infrastructures, geography, poverty, demographics, lack of health care, low employment, and low wages. Rural activists then require focus and approaches that address their specific needs. In Worlds Apart, attorney and civil rights advocate, Angela Glover Blackwell stated, “equity is the antidote to the plight of isolated, disinvested communities…including rural communities.” Do activists focus on equity as a goal? 

In consideration of recent events and movements, the theme of the 2024 Rural Women’s Studies Association conference, Gendered Advocacy and Activism, Shaping Institutions and Communities, emphasizes the central role that women and individuals of all genders and sexualities have played and continue to play in shaping and reforming our institutions and communities. This potentially includes the exploration of such subthemes as: advocacy, education, agriculture, health, reproductive rights, mental health, LGBTQIA+, politics, poverty, race, ethnicity, religion, and Women’s Rights issues.

Founded in 1997, RWSA is an international association for the advancement and promotion of research on rural women and gender in a historical perspective. RWSA welcomes academic scholars, public historians and archivists, graduate students, and representatives of rural organizations and communities to be association members and conference participants.

RWSA promotes and advances farm and rural women’s/gender studies from a historical perspective by encouraging research, promoting scholarship, and establishing and maintaining links with organizations that share these goals. Worldwide, the association aims to encourage research, to promote existing and forthcoming scholarship, and to establish and maintain links with contemporary organizations around the interests of rural women, rural communities and the rural environment, including farming and the agricultural sector, from a gender perspective. RWSA welcomes public historians and archivists, graduate students, and representatives of rural organizations and communities as conference participants and members, in addition to academic scholars from diverse fields, including sociology, anthropology, literature and languages, Indigenous Studies, visual and performative arts, and history.

Presentations take many forms at this RWSA conference. Possibilities include workshops, panel sessions, interactive sessions, roundtable discussions, poster presentations, open-mic discussions, performances, readings, and audiovisual presentations.

The theme, Gendered Advocacy and Activism, Shaping Institutions and Communities, encourages exploration of several sub-themes:

  • Grassroots activism
  • Advocacy
  • Women’s rights, including reproductive rights
  • LGBTQIA+ rights and identities
  • Health, including mental health
  • Education
  • Politics
  • Environment
  • Race and ethnicity

Other presentations or papers on any other topic related to rural women/gender/sexuality are also welcome.

Please submit the following information by 1 June 2023:

1. Title of paper/session/workshop/performance (working title is acceptable).

2. 250-word description/abstract of paper or proposed session/workshop, etc.

3. Brief vita/biography of presenter or session participants, and complete contact information for all.

4. Indicate whether or not you grant permission for RWSA to publish your description or abstract on the RWSA blog.

Most concurrent sessions will be 90 minutes. Past sessions have typically included three presentations followed by discussion. If your proposed session diverges from this standard format, please indicate that in your proposal.

We will notify all applicants whether or not we can accommodate your presentation or session by October 2023.

Submissions should be sent electronically to: rw******@gm***.com .

If it is not possible to send your proposal electronically, please send by regular mail to the following address if you are submitting from the Americas:

Cynthia Prescott

Department of History and American Indian Studies

University of North Dakota

221 Centennial Dr., Stop 8096

Grand Forks, ND 58202-8096

USA

Submissions by post from elsewhere in the world should be sent to:

Tanya Watson

24 Owentarglen

Rivervalley, Mallow, Co. Cork, P51WR2E, 

Ireland.

For information on travel grants and letters of invitation, contact Cherisse Jones-Branch at cr*****@as****.edu .

 For additional information on the RWSA, please go to the organization website, http://www.ohio.edu/history/rwsa/.

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RWSA, Africa Chapter, Marks International Day of the Girl Child

Posted on November 30, 2022 by ccprescott

On October 21, 2022, the Africa Chapter of Rural Women’s Studies Association sponsored a celebration of the International Day of the Girl Child. October 2022 marked the tenth anniversary of the United Nations’ International Day of the Girl. Over the past decade, the UN has helped to increase attention by governments, policymakers, and the general public to issues that matter to girls. Adolescent girls also have gained greater opportunities to be heard on the global stage.

Yet girls continue to face many challenges worldwide. Up to 10 million girls are at risk of child marriage—a situation that has worsened due to the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the Lowest Developed Countries (LDCs), almost half of primary schools lack single-sex toilets (UN Sustainable Development Goals Report 2021). Menstruation causes 100 million adolescent girls to miss school (ACESWorld).

RWSA’s Africa Chapter responded to these challenges by marking the International Day of the Girl Child with events on the theme “Our time is now, our rights our future” held at St. Peters College (Private) Olomore, Abeokuta, Ogun state, Nigeria.

Lead resource person Miss Ifeoluwa Zubair spoke on the topic, “Breaking boundaries and barriers caused as a result of stereotype and exclusion.” other stakeholders highlighted barriers to girls’ advancement, including low self-esteem, health challenges, and stigmatization. They encouraged girls to have positive mindsets, to know their rights, to be determined, and to  take advantage of opportunities as future leaders.

Chairman of Rural Women Studies Association (RWSA) Africa Chapter, Professor Olubunmi Asimolowo, welcomed participants, pointing out that the Association seeks to promote scholarship on women in rural environments and to establish and maintain links with contemporary farm and rural women’s organizations. Co-Chairman for Africa, Mrs. Oluwaseun Boye, said that RWSA’s Africa Chapter held the celebration of the international day of the girl child to empower women and girls by exposing them to available opportunities and encourage them to make their voices heard worldwide.

The program included lectures, interactive sessions, and counseling. Of particular note was training on menstrual hygiene and distribution of sanitary towels to students. Lack of such knowledge and products represents a significant barrier to adolescent girls’ continued schooling.

Sources:

UN Sustainable Development Goals Report 2021

ACESWorld, “Menstruation: A Barrier to Education,”

https://www.salienttimesonline.com.ng/2022/10/international-day-of-girl-child-rwsa.html

International Day of the Girl Child: RWSA empowers students

https://www.hotsecretnaija.com.ng/2022/10/international-day-of-girl-child-rwsa_86.html

Michael-Azeez Ogunsiji, “International Day Of The Girl Child: RWSA Empowers Ogun Students,” The Encounter,

https://theencounter.com.ng/2022/10/21/international-day-of-the-girl-child-rwsa-empowers-ogun-students/#.Y1LhZ89gfz4.whatsapp
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Call for Presentations and Papers–RWSA 2024

Posted on October 12, 2022 by ccprescott

Gendered Advocacy and Activism, Shaping Institutions and Communities 

Rural Women’s Studies Association Triennial Conference

Hosted by Arkansas State University, Jonesboro, Arkansas, USA

May 15-19, 2024

Recent challenges to civil rights in various locations internationally bring to mind equity in rural communities which has a separate set of challenges to those of urban areas. Yet, historically activism rooted in rural areas can result in broader change on both regional and national levels. Challenges activists face in pursuing change include a conglomeration of isolation, underfunded education, failing infrastructures, geography, poverty, demographics, lack of health care, low employment, and low wages. Rural activists then require focus and approaches that address their specific needs. In Worlds Apart, attorney and civil rights advocate, Angela Glover Blackwell stated, “equity is the antidote to the plight of isolated, disinvested communities…including rural communities.” Do activists focus on equity as a goal? 

In consideration of recent events and movements, the theme of the 2024 Rural Women’s Studies Association conference, Gendered Advocacy and Activism, Shaping Institutions and Communities, emphasizes the central role that women and individuals of all genders and sexualities have played and continue to play in shaping and reforming our institutions and communities. This potentially includes the exploration of such subthemes as: advocacy, education, agriculture, health, reproductive rights, mental health, LGBTQIA+, politics, poverty, race, ethnicity, religion, and Women’s Rights issues.

Founded in 1997, RWSA is an international association for the advancement and promotion of research on rural women and gender in a historical perspective. RWSA welcomes academic scholars, public historians and archivists, graduate students, and representatives of rural organizations and communities to be association members and conference participants.

RWSA promotes and advances farm and rural women’s/gender studies from a historical perspective by encouraging research, promoting scholarship, and establishing and maintaining links with organizations that share these goals. Worldwide, the association aims to encourage research, to promote existing and forthcoming scholarship, and to establish and maintain links with contemporary organizations around the interests of rural women, rural communities and the rural environment, including farming and the agricultural sector, from a gender perspective. RWSA welcomes public historians and archivists, graduate students, and representatives of rural organizations and communities as conference participants and members, in addition to academic scholars from diverse fields, including sociology, anthropology, literature and languages, Indigenous Studies, visual and performative arts, and history.

Presentations take many forms at this RWSA conference. Possibilities include workshops, panel sessions, interactive sessions, roundtable discussions, poster presentations, open-mic discussions, performances, readings, and audiovisual presentations.

The theme, Gendered Advocacy and Activism, Shaping Institutions and Communities, encourages exploration of several sub-themes:

  • Grassroots activism
  • Advocacy
  • Women’s rights, including reproductive rights
  • LGBTQIA+ rights and identities
  • Health, including mental health
  • Education
  • Politics
  • Environment
  • Race and ethnicity

Other presentations or papers on any other topic related to rural women/gender/sexuality are also welcome.

Please submit the following information by 15 April 2023:

1. Title of paper/session/workshop/performance (working title is acceptable).

2. 250-word description/abstract of paper or proposed session/workshop, etc.

3. Brief vita/biography of presenter or session participants, and complete contact information for all.

4. Indicate whether or not you grant permission for RWSA to publish your description or abstract on the RWSA blog.

Most concurrent sessions will be 90 minutes. Past sessions have typically included three presentations followed by discussion. If your proposed session diverges from this standard format, please indicate that in your proposal.

We will notify all applicants whether or not we can accommodate your presentation or session by October 2023.

Submissions should be sent electronically to: rw******@gm***.com .

If it is not possible to send your proposal electronically, please send by regular mail to the following address if you are submitting from the Americas:

Cynthia Prescott

Department of History and American Indian Studies

University of North Dakota

221 Centennial Dr., Stop 8096

Grand Forks, ND 58202-8096

USA

Submissions by post from elsewhere in the world should be sent to:

Tanya Watson

24 Owentarglen

Rivervalley, Mallow, Co. Cork, P51WR2E, 

Ireland.

For information on travel grants and letters of invitation, contact Cherisse Jones-Branch at cr*****@as****.edu .

 For additional information on the RWSA, please go to the organization website, http://www.ohio.edu/history/rwsa/.

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Poor Farms and the Mythmaking of the Multitasking Woman

Posted on September 1, 2022 by ccprescott

Megan Birk, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

In my recent book The Fundamental Institution: Poverty, Social Welfare, and Agriculture in American Poor Farms, I discuss all the disparate groups of people that poor farms served – the young and old, the sick, the homeless, the disabled, the abandoned… It’s a long list. In thinking and writing about the people who lived at and used poor farms, I also spent a lot of time considering the lives of employees. Many of them lived on site, with their own families, to work as both farm tenants of sorts and institutional managers.  Edna White was one such woman, working as both matron alongside her husband, and then as the first female superintendent in California after his death.  She raised her own two children at the county hospital (California’s term for poor farm), took care of between twenty and forty residents, and managed a staff that included a farm laborer, nurses, and sometimes a cook.  She cared for residents isolated on the farm during the flu pandemic of 1918, and dealt with criticism from state officials who complained about structural issues with the building; problems they laid on her doorstep despite certainly knowing she could not enact repairs without county approval.  In 1930 White suffered a different type of indignity, when the census enumerator listed the man who worked the farm as the “head of household” despite her position as superintendent and matron.    

Women were critical parts of the poor farm staff. Poor farms were one of the only options for single mothers, married women, and teenage girls to earn cash wages in rural places. They sewed, cooked, nursed, and cleaned. Typically they were managed by a matron – the wife of the superintendent – who worked in a hybrid space. She lived in a large building but did not own the furnishings or the house; she cooked and nursed and cleaned for both residents and her own family alike; she earned wages and had her work evaluated by county officials and the public in a way that most women did not; she ran a household staff while doing work considered by some to be undesirable and low-class; her children lived on a farm but were also surrounded by people who might have an addiction, an illness, or an emotional disability; she was both a farm wife and a working woman. In today’s terminology she multitasked: everyday, all day, often for many years. As might be expected not all matrons rose to the challenge and did so with skill or kindness, but many did just that. Counties lauded them for being “industrious and large-hearted” and critiqued them for their failings: “There seems to be a lack of motherly kindness and humanity in her methods.“ Couched in terms of 19th century gender norms these women received scrutiny not just for rural homemaking but as wage workers.

Charles and Amy Reed (seated center) with seven of their eight children, photographed on the porch of the Sangamon County Poor Farm main building. Helen Reed Herrin, mother of contributor Elaine Burrus, is seated right. (Courtesy Elaine Burrus) https://sangamoncountyhistory.org/wp/?p=10526

As the difficult years of pandemic life continue to unfurl, I’ve watched as colleagues and friends in academia and other positions face dilemmas that had a familiar historical ring – women were both working for wages in less-than-ideal conditions while also tending to and worrying about the health and safety of their own families. The pandemic took the challenges of working motherhood and amplified them all. It turned many of us back into caregivers for sick or elderly family. Faculty friends and colleagues worked at night after children went to bed, they woke earlier to try and accomplish yesterday’s unfinished tasks, they strategized about how to keep their families safe in spaces that were unyielding in their seeming dangers. Recently many of us have lacked the help of our usual social networks and were pushed away from academic productivity (and in some cases out of wage earning altogether) and toward aspects of caregiving many never envisioned for themselves. As a childless woman, I watched sort of helplessly as people tried to tread the water of a pandemic in a country that values neither motherhood nor the intellectual and economic contributions of women as workers. While everyone lifts their own burdens, some were decidedly heavier than others.  

While writing about matrons, I often found myself wondering how these women did it, the grind of work weeks that typically meant 80-100 hours of labor.  During the pandemic it’s reminded me of our present, because I don’t know how many working mothers and women have been doing it either.  Matrons who did wage work because their husband’s career demanded of them more than housewifery were outliers among their peers whose occupation was simply farm wife, because their efforts brought them in to constant contact with different and ever-changing institutional circumstances while on a farm and in their home. American women today are outliers among peers, not only because of our rapidly diminishing bodily autonomy, but because there are few social supports or financial aids to help with parenthood, and in academia the necessity of living away from family only makes that problem worse. 

The cost for women employed as matrons was sometimes their health and that of their children – matrons nursed residents as typhoid, TB, and other diseases ripped through their institutions, and some of their bodies broke and aged early from the strain of the physical work. At what cost for our current moment’s multitasking women remains to be seen, but what has no doubt been slowed is the intellectual contributions of our peers and colleagues asked to keep too many tasks balanced on a faulty foundation of “business in academia as usual,” without COVID-safe and affordable daycare, without vaccines for children under 5, without provisions for the care of our elders, without healthcare unattached to a specific job, without reasonable and paid parental leave. We study the past to see progress over time and make comparisons. We talk about the strains of rural women’s lives in past tense: being isolated during a long winter on a farm, kneading bread while nursing a baby, or darning socks while rocking a cradle with a spare foot, but recently women have experienced social isolation of their own, staying home to avoid the transmission of COVID while being separated from the support of family and friends, baking bread to both pass the time and to cope with interrupted supply lines, trying to write late at night while the children sleep.  It’s different, but it’s also strikingly similar.  There are no perfect parallels here, just the nagging reminder that competency is often rewarded with more work, leading women to carry a larger service burden both at home and in the workplace. 

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Mindful Wandering: Nature and Global Travel through the Eyes of a Farmgirl Scientist

Posted on June 8, 2022 by ccprescott

Rebecca J. Romsdahl, University of North Dakota

Editor’s Note: This post is an excerpt from Mindful Wandering: Nature and Global Travel through the Eyes of a Farmgirl Scientist by Rebecca J. Romsdahl (The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota, 2021). Mindful Wandering is available as a free E-book; hard copies are available for purchase.

How does life on a farm shape the essence of a girl? Farm life teaches a girl to be mindful, to pay attention to the world around her, to be considerate of other people and creatures. A farm embodies contours of change with a veneer of stability, like a prairie river meandering through its watershed, subtly shifting its boundaries within the landscape, simultaneously ever constant.

On a gravel road in southern Minnesota, surrounded by fields of corn and soybeans, there is a small cluster of farmhouses, a few red barns, and other outbuildings. One house is ranch-style, light gray with white trim. This is the house in which I grew up. It sits neatly on a clipped summer lawn with a grove of trees behind it, a mix of elms, cottonwoods, and walnuts.

Walnut trees create distinct childhood observations. First, you learn to not be afraid of things that go bump in the night. In late summer, when walnuts are ripe, they fall from their branches, hitting the roof of the house with a loud thunk and rolling down the shingles with a clickity-clack that echoes softly through the wooden attic beams. Then with a quick pip, they hit the edge of the roof, jump off, and land with a soft thump on the ground outside your bedroom window. Second, in spring the walnut trees are the last to fill out their leaves and in autumn they are the first to drop their gold colors at the slightest breeze. For much of the year, the house is framed by their naked, black branches. Some days in winter, the little house seems to fold itself into the matching landscape of gray sky and white snow, inviting you to stay inside where there is warmth and color.

My worldview was originally formed in this small farming community. This is my touchstone in life. In all my world travels, I see and hear and understand new cultures and experiences through the frame of my own background. I often find myself wondering, “How would my family relate to this scenario?” My sense of place has grown from the rolling hills of farm fields under big open sky to a global view of the entire Earth as my home. For example, during a road trip through Morocco, we stayed in the city of Zagora and the landscape provided a stark reminder of how water shapes landscapes and its value to people and nature. Too little water in one place is drought or a desert habitat, while a great amount of water in another place is considered flooding or a magnificent wetland ecosystem.

Wide swath of green trees and grass amid beige cityscape, with desert and buttes in background.
Oasis and Zagora, Morocco. Photo by Mick Beltz, 2017.

Zagora was known as the Moroccan entry point to the famous Sahara caravan road, 52 days by camel or foot to Timbuktu in present day Mali. Camel caravans have crossed the Sahara for centuries, transporting people and trade goods between the Moroccan Atlantic coast all the way to modern Ethiopia and Sudan in east Africa. Cloth, manufactured products, and paper were valuable goods brought inland, while silver, handmade crafts, date fruits, and salt were likely exchanged and sent back to Europe. Zagora is part of an oasis that forms a long ribbon of life between the Sahara Desert and the foothills of the Anti-Atlas Mountains. The oasis is a vast network composed of the Draa River, millions of palm trees that grow along its shores, cultivated crops, and many small cities and towns that have been built over the centuries. From an overlook, we could see boxy kasbah-style buildings made of red sandstone and painted concrete bordering the green sanctuary. The oasis stretched out before us for over 90 miles! To view the contrast of vibrant green against endless desert and red rock buttes was stunning. I had never imagined an oasis could be so large, and I have never seen so many palm trees.

Ten days exploring the northwest edge of the Sahara Desert etched a lasting impression in my mind. The great desert holds unexpected resilience and diversity of life, as well as subtle surprises, if you are willing to explore a little. Going home to the floodplain valley where the Red River of the North meanders, was a shock to my system. The temperature was shivering around 70 degrees Fahrenheit, and the region was awash in summer green. As the verdant landscape passed by our car window, I sat in the passenger seat stunned and marveling at the effect of what many of us normally take for granted, life-giving water.

The desire to write Mindful Wandering has been skulking around the back of my brain since 1995. But the actual idea of it only began to take shape and form after I returned from living half a year in the United Kingdom. I wanted to pull on some of the threads of my life and weave them together. Reflecting on thousands of journal pages written so far, I have gone back through time and across the world to extract musings, observations, and stories to share. This resulting collection of essays is an exercise in mindful wandering. How has my understanding of the world changed over the past 25 years, living in different watersheds, visiting different countries, growing from a farmgirl to a scientist? But mindful wandering is not just a personal activity. While wandering the globe, I contemplate ideas of sustainability and resilience and advocate that we (especially those of us privileged enough to travel) must expand our mindful considerations to include all the other inhabitants of this beautiful Earth.

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Home Economics Extension Bulletins: Science to Alleviate Rural Women’s Drudgery

Posted on May 11, 2022 by ccprescott

Kathleen McHugh, Oregon State University

Kathleen McHugh is a master’s student at Oregon State University studying History and Philosophy of Science. Her research focuses on home economics education.

In 1911, the magazine Popular Science published an article on scientific food preparation, which highlighted a new way for women to receive scientific knowledge on how to improve their homes: extension bulletins. The article claimed these bulletins served as a “crusade of enlightenment” to improve the living conditions and food of rural Americans by providing scientific advice previously not available to these rural women.[1] Home economics extension bulletins would now allow rural women to improve their homes through science, a method they had not had access to before. Ava B. Milam, a professor of Domestic Science at Oregon Agricultural College (OAC), embodied this idea of providing rural women with scientific advice through two of her extension bulletins on cake and jelly making, both published in 1913 by the OAC Federal Cooperative Extension Service. Through these bulletins she provided a path for women to alleviate their drudgery through the application of science to mundane daily tasks.

Milam’s first published extension bulletin was Principles of Cake Making. Her application of science to improving cake baking techniques illustrates how she used subjects familiar to rural women to introduce them to scientific management of the home. Her master’s thesis for the University of Chicago, completed in 1911, also approached the topic of using science to bake a superior cake. Her bulletin pulled ideas directly from her thesis and offered a six-page condensed form of her earlier research. Her thesis, “Factors Affecting the Economic and Dietetic Value of Foods. No. 1. A Study of Cakes” consisted of fifty-seven pages of highly scientific and detailed graphs and tables discussing different cake ingredients, comparing the economic value of a particular ingredient with its effect on the cake. The audience for this thesis was college-educated home economists and dieticians (many of whom held an advanced degree, such as a master’s or doctorate in their respective field). To translate the ideas from her thesis to an extension audience, Milam removed the graphs and tables and replaced them with paragraphs detailing how a certain ingredient affected the cake in a simpler manner, omitting any technical language. For example, in her thesis, Milam discusses what proteins form in different types of flour, analyzing how those proteins affect the cake.[2] However, in her bulletin, Milam simply tells the reader pastry flour is superior without an explanation of why.[3] Milam only presented the conclusions from her thesis research, leaving out her methods for how she conducted experiments. The simplicity of the bulletin compared to her thesis indicates that since the audience was not specialists in home economics, Milam believe they would benefit more from the results of the study than from the study itself.

The organization of this bulletin illustrates its purpose in providing scientific advice on cake baking to women who already knew how to bake a cake and were seeking to improve their methods using modern scientific ideas. While Milam wrote these bulletins for an audience lacking a formal education as rural schools were inconsistent (although rural women were overall highly literate), their comprehension still required a basic knowledge of domesticity.[4]  She divided the bulletin by the ingredients needed for a cake (flour, sugar, liquid, eggs, and fats), then baking, finally ending with the recipe. By making the recipe the final piece of information rather than the first, Milam signified that this bulletin is not a cookbook meant to provide recipes but a tool to teach rural women how to improve their own cake recipes, likely handed down generation to generation. This bulletin is a scientific document, advising rural women with limited scientific training how to adapt their kitchen methods to create a scientifically proven better result. Milam stated in the beginning of the bulletin that she is not trying to replace traditional knowledge that has been passed down regarding cooking, only providing new techniques for cake making to save time, energy, and money: “This method is one that has been used for many years. It has been handed down from generation to generation…At present, when time and energy are considered important factors in economy, the question arises, why not simplify the process of cake making, decreasing its cost from this standpoint.”[5]

Soon after her first bulletin, Milam published Principles of Jelly Making. The structure of this bulletin closely mirrored Principles of Cake Making. Both outlined similar purposes for their publication: to provide additional knowledge to a cooking task that many rural women were already familiar with and to improve its efficiency. While in her bulletin on cakes, Milam focused on each individual ingredient, in this bulletin her writing is almost solely on the process for making jelly, with a short paragraph on what fruit should be used. Her advice is slightly more scientific than her previous bulletin. Milam writes “jelly cannot be made ‘by rule of thumb,’ yet there are some essential points which, when recognized by the housewife, enable her to work more intelligently with fruit juice,” emphasizing that new scientific advice will assist women in making better jellies.[6] She also incorporated science through her discussion on the need for acid and pectin in choosing a fruit to use for jelly, although she omitted a scientific explanation of the two. She also encouraged her reader to analyze what went wrong when the jelly does not turn out correctly. She provided a list of issues and their causes with instructions on how to improve the next time, such as cooking for less time or using additional sugar based on the level of pectin.[7] This bulletin does not contain a recipe for any type of jelly. Like the other on cake making, this shows that the primary purpose of this bulletin was not to serve as a cookbook, but to present new scientific information to improve existing processes in rural households. Milam intended for this bulletin to aid in the making of jelly by experienced farmwives, not introduce the concept to a new audience.

While no recorded response to Milam’s extension bulletins exists, I believe they were successful in providing rural women with new tools to improve drudgery of their non-scientific infused lives by allowing them to utilize tools they already had to eliminate sources of drudgery from their everyday lives through scientific methods.

While today Americans in rural areas are increasingly rejecting scientific ideas such as masking and the Covid-19 vaccine, the rural women of Milam’s time cherished the scientific knowledge they received via her extension bulletins. For example, through presenting this work, I learned a rural Oregonian’s neighbor treasured Milam’s extension bulletins, keeping them enclosed in protective coverings and passing them down to her daughter upon her death.

Editor’s Note:

Many of the themes in this post also appear in the Rural Women’s Studies Association’s “academic cookbook,” Backstories: The Kitchen Table Talk Cookbook, edited by Cynthia C. Prescott and Maureen S. Thompson:

  • On economics in recipes, see Backstories chapter 8.
  • For early-20th-century Oregon cake recipes, see Backstories chapter 18.
  • On the evolution of recipes and cookbooks, see Backstories chapters 3 and 21.
  • On cake recipes across generations, see Backstories chapter 36.
  • On new techniques for cake baking, see Backstories chapters 40-41.
  • For heritage jelly recipes, see Backstories chapters 16 and 32.
  • On acceptance of and resistance to later Extension programs, see Backstories chapter 44.

Backstories is available as a free E-book download. Paperback copies are available for $20 plus shipping & handling within the US with proceeds benefitting RWSA, and worldwide from Amazon.

Notes

[1] Laura Clarke Rockwood, “Food Preparation and Its Relation to the Development of Efficient Personality in the Home,” Popular Science 79 (September 1911): 277.

[2] Ava B. Milam, “Factors Affecting the Economic and Dietetic Value of Foods. No. 1. A Study of Cakes” (Master of Arts, Chicago, The University of Chicago, 1911), 11–12.

[3] Ava B. Milam, Principles of Cake Making (Corvallis: Oregon Agricultural College Extension Division, 1913), 4.

[4] Marilyn Irvin Holt, Linoleum, Better Babies, and the Modern Farm Woman, 1890-1930 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), 32, 158; Katherine Jellison, Entitled to Power: Farm Women and Technology, 1913-1963 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 10–11.

[5] Milam, Principles of Cake Making, 3.

[6] Ava B. Milam, Principles of Jelly Making (Corvallis: Oregon Agricultural College Extension Division, 1913), 3.

[7] Milam, Principles of Jelly Making, 6.

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Reflections on Sources and the Publication of My First Book

Posted on March 2, 2022 by ccprescott

Jodey Nurse

University of Waterloo

The publication of my first monograph, Cultivating Community: Women and Agricultural Fairs in Ontario, has been an exciting and rewarding experience. I completed the research for this book during my Ph.D., but after receiving my doctorate in 2016, I embarked on new scholarly projects which I have since continued. However, my commitment to this earlier work never stalled, only slowed, and the release of my book is now a time of celebration–if also trepidation–for the chance to share it with a wider audience.

Since the launch of the book in recent weeks, I’ve had the chance to reflect on the importance of this work and its deep personal meaning. I’ve remarked that my and my family’s involvement in agricultural fairs has shaped the book and noted my feelings of gratitude towards an institution that ushered in my existence (my parents met while exhibiting cattle at the Canadian National Exhibition).

I’ve also discussed the deficit of academic literature I discovered about women’s experiences at township and county fairs when I began researching these events, and how I hoped my work would help fill the void in that scholarship by highlighting how women’s involvement became critical to agricultural fairs’ growth and prosperity, but also how and why women’s experiences at fairs changed over time.

And similar to other historians of women’s history, I observed the challenges of finding women’s voices in the archives and other written records. Although I spent a great deal of time researching and utilizing written sources, such as government reports, agricultural society membership lists, prize lists, annual reports, and newspaper accounts, it was the information I garnered from other sources–material and oral–that gave me deeper insight into women’s lives. It is this aspect of the work, the use of oral history and material cultural history, that I wish to write about here.

Artifacts were a defining feature of my chapter on women’s domestic manufactures, fancywork, and fine art. These items, unlike perishable goods exhibited in other categories of fair competition, could be kept and maintained long after the fair was over. Indeed, I discovered clothing, textile, craft, and art work that was exhibited in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These items were kept by their creators and their families and later donated to regional museums for posterity. By situating these objects in their historical context, I discovered deeper stories that allowed me to better understand the social, cultural, and economic environments in which their creators lived. The artifacts also allowed me to consider new questions for my work, including what they represented about their makers’ values, beliefs, and identities.

Oral history was very important for this research as well. When I decided to extend my study into the postwar period, the opportunity to use oral history was both exciting and intimidating. Exciting because of oral history’s ability to reveal stories not recorded elsewhere, but also intimidating because of a historian’s responsibility to an interviewee for successfully communicating those stories. The interview process had a profound impact on me because it reinforced the idea, which other rural women’s scholars have long encouraged, that we must listen to women and how they tell their own stories when writing their history.

It is my sincerest desire that what I learned about women’s involvement in agricultural fairs is clearly conveyed to and appreciated by those who read my book. But I also hope this work provides further evidence for the need to include many types of sources when writing history. Historians understand that one should never rely on only a few written records to discover meaningful patterns and observations. But searching out greater kinds of source materials, be that oral testimony or material things, is also important for interpreting the past.

I admit there are still missing stories that need to be told about this topic; certainly not all women’s experiences have been represented in one monograph. But through the range of sources I did use, I am content that meaningful insights into rural women’s lives were made and a more complex story of the agricultural fair was achieved.

Jodey Nurse is a research assistant professor in the Department of History, University of Waterloo. Nurse is also the RWSA International Membership and Communication Coordinator for Canada. Her research includes a range of topics related to rural communities and agricultural policy. Her first monograph, Cultivating Community: Women and Agricultural Fairs in Ontario was published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in February 2022.

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Gender and Rural History: A Roundtable

Posted on January 5, 2022 by ccprescott

What is the meaning, place and role of gender in both the rural past and the rural historiography?

This is the topic of a debate article just published by journal Historia Agraria (see it here). The discussion revolves around a variety of questions, ranging from the relevance, the opportunity and the very history of the use of gender category in rural history, to the analysis of gender (im)balances in the community of historians working in this field of studies, not to mention the very definition of what is meant by gender.

These and other related topics, for which there are no single or definitive answers, are debated here in a roundtable format.

Editors: José Vicente Serrão (Lisbon, Portugal), and Micheline Cariño (La Paz, Mexico). Contributors: Ana Cabana (Compostela, Spain), Colin R. Johnson (Indiana, USA), Henry French (Exeter, UK), and Leen Van Molle (Leuven, Belgium).

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“If you can’t quit cryin’ you can’t come here no more”

Posted on December 8, 2021 by ccprescott

Betty Frizzell

Growing up, the women around me did a lot of talking, but no one heard them. Their voice was lost in the confines of poverty and social standing. Often seen but not heard–I want to be their voice. It takes true grit to be a single woman or mother living in a small community with preconceived ideas of your existence. Limited resources and heartache did not stop them from carving out a life full of laughter and joy. Witnessing this type of courage and strength helped me transition from a shy country girl to a deputy sheriff who worked my way up to Police Chief. I love sharing their stories with others who may not have thought about the real lives of these women. Readers will get a glimpse into the intricate and complex stories of determination and survival. I am proud of my heritage of being a rural woman and enjoy writing about the people and places that made me.

Frizzell’s new book

From 1980 to present, the number of women in Missouri jails has increased 596%  and the number of women in prison has increased 1,339%. Most of the incoming female inmates are from rural places in the state which send the most people to prison(1).

In Betty Frizzell’s new book, “If you can’t quit cryin’ you can’t come here no more,” the story of one of those rural women, Vicky Isaac. 

On May 12, 2013, 48-year-old Vicky Isaac of rural Puxico, Missouri, a small town located near the Missouri bootheel, called 911 and confessed to shooting her husband. Her sister, Betty Frizzell escaped her family’s legacy of crime, addiction, and abuse to become a respected Chief of Police and teacher. Drawn back to the town and people of her past, Betty works to uncover the truth of murder. While investigating this case, she learns sad realities about mental illness, small-town politics and her own culture.

“Being a Missouri country girl, when Mom told me to do something, I did it. When she was dying during the summer of 2001 every request, she made felt important, and I thought it would be dishonorable not to go to any length to follow her commands. Often times, I wished I was raised somewhere else. Somewhere the burden of my raisin’ didn’t have a hold over me. Friends from other parts of the United States didn’t understand my devotion to a woman I didn’t understand or even like. Violence from the hands of your family was to be expected, but if outsiders dare threaten—that was another thing. Loyalty to our blood and kin was bred in the bone, and to disobey my Mom would be to betray that legacy. It wasn’t so much out of love that I would fulfill my promise to take care of Vicky and Kenny, but out of duty.”

Betty writes primarily about law enforcement and women in the rural criminal justice system. She states, “Most of my writings come from first hand experience as a detective and Chief of police in small town Missouri.  I hope to shine a light on how the lack of resources affects law enforcement with egregious consequences for the female population in these communities. Also, how being from a different gender and lower socio-economic background creates a differing diverse approach to policing.”

  1.  Vera  Institute of Justice. “Incarceration Trends in Missouri – Vera Institute of JusticeVer.” Vera Institute of Justice, https://www.vera.org/downloads/pdfdownloads/state-incarceration-trends-missouri.pdf.
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A Countess Rural Brewer

Posted on November 10, 2021 by ccprescott

Gary Gillman, Beer Et Seq

A Polish countess of ca. 1900 figures in our account, but first some background on women and brewing, which for our purposes here means brewing in the European tradition. According to a well-referenced Wikipedia essay:

From the beginning of industrialization to the 1960s and early 1970s, most women were moved out of the brewing industry, though throughout the world, they continued to homebrew following ancestral methods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_brewing

Further reading suggests the period of exclusion started with the rise of male brewing guilds in Europe and intensified with the onset of industrialization. With the rise of modern craft brewing in the last 40 years and changing cultural attitudes, women have entered – or rather re-entered – professional brewing. Women have also been active in beer education, both consumer and academic, and form an important part of the consumer base.

Still, the brewing past provides notable examples of female achievement in commercial brewing, including in rural settings. First, a question of definition: Does a landowning member of the Polish aristocracy qualify as a “rural woman” in the present context?

Typically, women of modest means, often not benefitting from higher education, have been the focus of RWSA studies. This makes sense from numerous standpoints, especially a demographic one – the bulk of most nations’ peoples are low-earners if not often providing unwaged labour, a particular feature of women’s history.

Yet, some women who lived or worked in rural settings were not of this class, but rather its obverse: the gentry. Their challenges and achievements are still notable once the context in which they worked is factored. A good example is the “Countess Brewer” of Kiev, the city today styled Kyiv in Ukraine and formerly part of the Russian Empire. In 1896 dozens of American newspapers printed an item about the countess that apparently originated in the Philadelphia Record.


Zwierzyniec Brewery in Poland was an estate brewery established in the 19th century by Polish nobility. It has no known connection to Countess Branicka. (Budynek główny browaru w Zwierzyńcu). Via Wikipedia.

The stories describe a “Russian” countess who grew grain on her estates that was processed into beer in her brewery, also located on the estate it seems, albeit the actual location is not specified. It seems likely though that the brewery was on or near her barley-growing estate. Certainly the basic raw material for beer, barley, was grown on her lands which she had to visit regularly and probably lived at for certain periods.

The Naples Record printed the story in February 1896, see here (via Fulton Newspapers).

The Naples Record February 5, 1896 via Fulton Newspapers.

The story explains the countess paid a visit to a Berlin, Germany brewery to learn details of the pneumatic malting process. Her “large acreage” provided the necessary barley, but barley must be made into malt for brewing, and she could not get sufficient labor to operate a traditional floor maltings (a labor-intensive, multi-day process involving numerous steps of hydration, turning, and temperature control).

Pneumatic malting, a then comparatively recent industrial innovation, seemed the solution, and evidently the countess had kept up on technological developments in her field. Our research indicates that vital aspects of pneumatic malting had originated near Nancy, France via the work of Frenchman Nicholas Galland, and had been deployed in sizeable breweries, often in urban spaces. Milwaukee, Wisconsin was one as a firm holding a license from French and German inventors marketed such equipment from the late 19th century until the onset of Prohibition (1920).

Diagrammatic view of pneumatic malting. Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.), v. 17, 1911, “Malt” article, pp. 499 ff. Public domain. Image via Wikisource.

The countess provided samples of her beer to the German brewer who hosted her, which he pronounced equal to the best German and Bohemian (now Czech) beer. Then, as today, both German and Czech lager beers were widely acclaimed. The subtext evidently was that a woman was not expected to produce beer to a high standard, yet the countess proved the contrary as objectively assessed by a both a male and urban-based brewer, in Berlin.

The news report added the countess was believed to be “the only woman brewer in Europe”. This likely was an exaggeration. In addition, it did not factor that many women worked with their husbands in breweries and provided significant, “unofficial” support to the enterprise. The quotation does attest however to the rarity of women assuming an official role in breweries at the time.

Countess Branicka

Róża Maria Augusta hr. Tarnowska (hr. Branicka h. Korczak)

As the news piece did not name the blue-blood brewer, who was she? Probably, Rosa Maria Branicka, a member of a noble Polish family. This lady often went by her married name, Rosa Maria Tarnowska (or Tarnowski). Her husband was Count Stanislaw Tarnowski, a well-known Polish historian and literary figure. A Countess Branicka is mentioned by the author Galina Ulianova in her 2009 study Female Entrepreneurs in Nineteenth-Century Russia. At pp. 170-171:

The big landowner Countess Maria Branicka owned eleven enterprises in Kiev Province [today, Kyiv oblast]: four mills (all leased out), two distilleries, one brewery and four sugar beet plants.

If, as seems likely, the countess brewer was the figure mentioned, the scale of her industry well exceeded even the bounds of commercial brewing. Ulianova adds that in 1897 these businesses aggregated a total of 2,010 workers and realized 2.2 million roubles. This was not a cottage enterprise – more a mini-empire.

It seems likely the determined-looking woman in a Geni webpage, Roza Maria Augusta Tarnowska (1854-1942), was the countess brewer. An ancestry website devoted to the Branicka family describes Roza Branicka as a countess, moreover. Her grandfather was Count Wladyslaw Grzegorz Branicki, a member of Polish nobility and general officer in the Russian army. He owned estates outside Kiev and was a descendant of Catherine the Great. It appears Countess Branicka inherited lands through her father Konstanty, which provided the basis for her entrepreneurship.

Takeaway

There have always been complexities to the social pattern including in gender and occupational history. Commercial brewing discloses numerous instances including in the shape of Countess Branicka, the presumed Countess Brewer. She was of the land-owning gentry even if not permanently living on her agricultural estate, hence, a rural-based or -interested woman. By dint of her initiative and drive, assisted surely by her education, family networks, and wealth, she sought out a technology developed and often applied in urban spaces by males. Her goal, with evident success, was to rival the best products made by male brewers working (often) in sophisticated centers.

Acknowledgement: Many thanks to Professor Cynthia Prescott for our helpful discussions and her assistance to finalize the text.

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