Cynthia C. Prescott and Maureen S. Thompson, editors. Backstories: The Kitchen Table Talk Cookbook. Forthcoming
Sharing recipes is a form of intimate conversation that nourishes body and soul, family and community. Backstories: The Kitchen Table Talk Cookbook integrates formal scholarship with informal reflections, analyses of recipe books with heirloom recipes, and text with images to emphasize the ways that economics, politics, and personal meaning come together to shape our changing relationships with food. By embracing elements of history, rural studies, and women’s studies, this volume offers a unique perspective by relating food history with social dynamics. It is sure to inspire eclectic dining and conversations.
Cynthia C. Prescott is Professor of History at the University of North Dakota and an occasional baker. Her research focuses on portrayals of rural women in cultural memory.
Maureen Sherrard Thompson is a Ph.D. candidate at Florida International University. Her dissertation focuses on business, environmental, and gender perspectives associated with the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century seed industry.
With contributions by: Linda Ambrose, Samantha K. Ammons, Jenny Barker Devine, Nikki Berg Burin, Lynne Byall Benson, Eli Bosler, Carla Burgos, Joseph Cates, Diana Chen, Myrtle Dougall, Egge, Margaret Thomas Evans, Dee Garceau, Tracey Hanshew, Kathryn Harvey, Mazie Hough, Sarah Kesterson, Marie Kenny, Hannah Peters Jarvis, Katherine Jellison, M. Jensen, Cherisse Jones-Branch, Katie Mayer, Amy L. McKinney, Diane McKenzie, Krista Lynn Minnotte, Elizabeth H. Morris, Sara E. Morris, Mary Murphy, Steph Noell, Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, Virginia Scharff, Rebecca Sharpless, Rachel Snell, Joan Speyer, Pamela Snow Sweetser, Rebecca Shimoni Stoil, Erna van Duren, Audrey Williams, Catharine Anne Wilson, Jean Wilson.
Welcome to the Rural Women’s Studies Association (RWSA) for its 14th triennial conference.
The theme, “Kitchen Table Talk to Global Forum,” emphasizes how conversations, relationships, and food shape rural communities. This theme allows for the consideration of the ways that gendered, sexual, ethnic, and racial identities affect personal power, class consciousness, individual choice, and community development. These subjects lend themselves to the exploration of rural activism, social justice, innovation, politics, business development, cultural expression, self-governance, and collective experiences — both historical and contemporary — locally and globally.
The RWSA is an international association founded in 1997 to promote and advance farm and rural women’s/gender studies in an historical perspective by encouraging research, promoting scholarship, and establishing and maintaining links with organizations that share these goals. The 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, and history.
The University of Guelph is proud to host the conference. The University of Guelph is “Canada’s Food University” and is internationally recognized for its impact on agricultural sciences and rural life. It has been at the forefront of research in this area for over 150 years. It has a rich history in agriculture that extends back to 1874 when it opened as an Agricultural College. In 1903 MacDonald Institute was established and by the 1950s it was the premier Home Economics school in North America. In 1922 the Ontario Veterinary College moved to Guelph, the oldest veterinary college in Canada. These three colleges were amalgamated in 1964 to form the University of Guelph, which is now a fully comprehensive university. This is the first time that the University has brought together practitioners, advocates, and scholars from different disciplines to study rural women in historical perspective.
We acknowledge that our campuses reside on the treaty lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit and lands that the Anishinnabe, Hodinohso:ni, Lūnaapéewak, and Wendat peoples have inhabited for centuries. These lands continue to be home to diverse communities of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples. Acknowledging the land reminds us of our commitment to reconciliation with Indigenous peoples and lands.
Local Arrangements Committee: From the University of Guelph: Chair & RWSA Co-Chair Catharine Wilson, Sara Epp, Rebecca Beausaert, Maggie McCormick, Casandra Bryant, Stephanie Craig, Brandon Mendonca, Maddie Hendricks; and Andrea Gal from Wilton Consulting Group.
Program Committee: Co-Chairs Katherine Jellison, Ohio University and Jenny Barker Devine, Illinois College; Margaret Thomas-Evans, Indiana University East; Jodey Nurse, McMaster University; Tracey Hanshew, Washington State TC; Amy McKinney, Northwest College; and
Catharine Wilson, RWSA Co-Chair, University of Guelph.
Schedule at-a-Glance (All times are Eastern Daylight Time or UTC -4)
Tuesday, May 11
8:30-9:00am – Explore the Conference Platform on your own
9:00-9:45am – Welcome Session
BREAK – 10:00-10:30am
10:30am-12:00pm – Concurrent Sessions
1: Gender Structures in Livestock Breeding and Farm Management
2: Educating Mother: Political and Economic Education for Rural Women
12:00-2:00pm – SPECIAL EVENT – Launch of the RWSA Cookbook 2:00-3:00pm – Concurrent Sessions
3: Situated Solidarities: “Feeding the World” Mythology and Transnational Feminist Praxis, a roundtable discussion
4: Women and Cattle Production: From Midwestern Convents to the High Plains BREAK – 3:30-4:00pm – Break Time: Meet Other Grad Students
4:00-5:00pm – Concurrent Sessions
5: Confronting Crisis in the Countryside: Gender, Race, Class, and Sexuality in Rural Environments 6: Can She Cook?
Wednesday, May 12
8:30-10:00am – Concurrent Sessions
7: Rural Women and 21st-century: Liminality, Exception, and Empowerment 8: Girlhood and Sisterhood from Rural to Global
BREAK – 10:00-10:30am – Break Time: Next Berkshire Conference
10:30am-12:00pm – Concurrent Sessions 9: Domestic Spaces: Preserving Rural Life
10: Cookbooks and Food Experts: A Taste of Backstories: The Kitchen Table Talk Cookbook BREAK – 12:00-12:30pm
12:30-2:00pm – SPECIAL EVENT – Keynote Speaker: Kim Anderson
2:00-3:30pm – Concurrent Sessions
11: Dairying as an Occupational Identity for Women: From Farm to Factory in the Netherlands and Sweden 12: Tales & Tables: Foodways of Eastern Montana
13: Rural Women and Political Action in the 1970s and 1980s BREAK – 3:30-4:00pm
4:00-5:00pm – Concurrent Sessions
14: Women, Foodways, and Power in Arkansas 15: Regional Foodways in the 19th Century
7:00-8:00pm – Session
16: Family Farms/Family Decisions
Thursday, May 13
8:30-10:00am – Concurrent Sessions 17: Nigerian Women and Mental Health 18: Recipes, Memory, and Identity
BREAK – 10:00-10:30am
10:30am-12:00pm – Concurrent Sessions
19: Rural Women Making and Breaking the Mold 20: Rural Women as Home Healers
21: The Food We Eat, the Stories We Tell: Kitchen Table Talk from Appalachia
12:00-2:00pm – SPECIAL EVENT- RWSA BUSINESS MEETING
12:30-2:00pm – Launch of “What Canada Ate” exhibit & website, a Tribute to Anita Stewart
2:00-3:30pm – Concurrent Sessions 22: Politics Begin in the Kitchen
23: From Rural Hearth to Cookstove
24: Selling Produce, Navigating Markets
BREAK – 3:30-4:00pm – Break Time: Share Ideas about Publishing
Friday, May 14
8:30-10:00am – Concurrent Sessions
25: Rural Women’s Mental and Physical Health 26: Rural Women: Recipes and Remembering
10:30am-12:00pm – Concurrent Sessions 27: Food on the Rural Canadian Homefront 28: Food, Family, and Poverty in the US 29: A Daughter
12:00-2:00pm – SPECIAL EVENT – Collecting COVID Stories, a Roundtable
2:00-3:30pm – Concurrent Sessions
30: Passionate and Personal: ‘non-feminist” Rural Labour’s Broader Implications
31: Reading Between the Lines: Women, Literature, & the Kitchen Table in 20th-Century Rural and Prairie Canada
3:00-5:00pm – SPECIAL EVENT – Musical Performance by Mary Parkinson Saturday, May 15
8:30-10:00am – Concurrent Sessions 32: What’s on the Table
33: Social Action and Identity Building
BREAK – 10:00-10:30am – Break Time: Grad Student Get-together
10:30am-12:00am – SPECIAL EVENT: Mentorship & Development Networks for Rural Women & Researchers
12:00-2:00pm – SPECIAL EVENT – Farm Show
2:00-3:30pm – Concurrent Sessions
34: Leaders in Extension Service and Agricultural Journalism
35: Fellowship in the Digital Age: Rural Women, Community, and Social Media
BREAK – 3:30-4:00pm – Break Time: Sharing Ideas about the Next RWSA Conference
4:00-5:00pm – Social Hour
Rural Women’s Studies Triennial Conference May 11-15, 2021
All times are Eastern Daylight Time or UTC -4 (Updated April 20, 2021)
All events below are hosted in Sessions in Hopin unless they are designated Main Stage or Expo Hall.
Welcome Everyone. Throughout the conference we invite you to explore the conference platform including the Expo Hall. If you have any technical difficulties or questions, visit the Technical Support booth in the Expo Hall.
Many opportunities exist to visit with friends and network. Click on People to find a particular person and say hi or arrange a video call. Or click on the Event Chat and say, “Hello from Barcelona!” which sends a message to all participants. You can also click on Networking and be randomly matched up with another delegate. Or you can arrange to meet in the “Lounge” in Sessions to visit with a few friends or meet new ones.
HAPPY CONFERENCING
TUESDAY, MAY 11
8:30-9:00am – Explore the Conference Platform on Your Own
Find the Welcome Session and other sessions you would like to attend today. If you have any technical difficulties or questions, visit the Technical Support booth in the Expo Hall.
9:00-9:45am – Welcome session
BREAK – 10:00-10:30am
Take this time to familiarize yourself with Hopin or network. Visit the Expo Hall, try some of the physical activities in our “Take a Break” booths, and pick up your Scavenger Hunt clipboard in the Reception area.
10:30am-12:00pm – CONCURRENT SESSIONS
Session 1 Gender Structures in Livestock Breeding and Farm Management
Jodey Nurse, McMaster University, Chair
Margaret Derry, University of Guelph, “Chickens and Dairy Cows: Changing Attitudes to the Animals and Their Breeding with the Masculinisation of the North American Poultry and Dairy Industries.”
Alejandra de Arce, National University of Quilmes, “Unequal Contracts: Dairy Producers and Gender Structures in Buenos Aires since the 1960s”
Session 2 Educating Mother: Political and Economic Education for Rural Women
Tracey Hanshew, Washington State University Tri-Cities, Chair
Minoa Uffelman, Austin Peay State University, “‘Educated Motherhood,’ the ‘Grandest Monument to the South’: The UDC and Lost Cause Education in Rural Tennessee”
Marie Ruiz, Université de Picardie Jules Verne, “From City Life to Country Life: Colonial Training for British Gentlewoman Emigrants at Swanley Horticultural College, England, and McDonald Institute, Guelph, Canada”
Huesseina Dinani, University of Toronto-Scarborough, “Rural Women and the Gendered Politics of Adult Education and Women’s Income Generating Programs in Post-Independence Tanzania, 1960s-1970s”
Ginny Kilander, University of Wyoming, “‘Beef. Real Food for Real People’: American National CattleWomen’s History and Educational Campaigns”
12:00-2:00pm – Launch of the RWSA Cookbook – Sampling Rural Cooking: A Taste of Backstories: The Kitchen Table Talk Cookbook
Maureen Thompson, Florida International University, Chair
Kathryn Harvey, University of Guelph, “The Country Housewife and Black Whales: Centuries of Rural and Community Cookbooks in the University of Guelph’s Archival and Special Collections”
Stephanie Noell, University of Texas at San Antonio, “Tamales in the UTSA Mexican Cookbook Collection”
Mary Murphy, Montana State University, “Hospitality Unbound: Cooking, Community, and Competition”
Rachel Snell, Independent Scholar, “Sweet Dainties and Hearty Staples: Favorite Recipes of Early Twentieth-Century Downeast Maine”
Tracey Hanshew, Washington State University Tri-Cities, “At Mammaw’s Table” Sara Morris, University of Kansas, “Cooking with Delmarva Farm women”
Cynthia Prescott, University of North Dakota, “Girl Meets Farm Meets Olive Garden Lady”
2:00-3:00pm – CONCURRENT SESSIONS
Session 3 Situated Solidarities: “Feeding the World” Mythology and Transnational Feminist Praxis, a roundtable discussion
Angie Carter, Michigan Tech University Carrie Chennault, Colorado State University Abby Dubisar, Iowa State University
Ahna Kruzic, Pesticide Action Network North America Maritza Pierre, Ohio State University
Gabrielle Roesch-McNally, American Farmland Trust
Session 4 Women and Cattle Production: From Midwestern Convents to the High Plains
Tracey Hanshew, Washington State University Tri-Cities, Chair
Elyssa Ford, Northwest Missouri State University, “‘Fine Herds of Cattle’: Rural Nuns and Food Production”
Kaitlyn Weldon, Independent Scholar, “Cattle Queens: Female Ranchers in the American West, 1870- 1920”
BREAK – 3:30-4:00pm – “Break Time: Meet Other Grad Students”
Enjoy some quiet time or join others in “Break Time: Meet Other Grad Students” in the Session area of Hopin.
4:00-5:00pm – CONCURRENT SESSIONS
Session 5 Confronting Crisis in the Countryside: Gender, Race, Class, and Sexuality in Rural Environments
Katherine Jellison, Ohio University, Chair
Nicola Verdon, Sheffield Hallam University, “The Operation of the Women’s War Agricultural Committees in England, 1915-1920”
Beatrice Adams, Rutgers University, “Soul City and the Gendering of a Rural Freedom Dream”
Session 6 Can She Cook?
Amy McKinney, Northwest College, Chair
Pamela Sweetser, Independent Scholar, “‘Can She Cook?’ The Measure of a Woman: Avis ‘Ma’ Dudley, 1896-1983, Aroostook County, Maine”
Rebecca Beausaert, University of Guelph, “From Kitchen to Kiln: Women and Tobacco Farming in Mid- Twentieth Century Southwestern Ontario”
WEDNESDAY, MAY 12
8:30-10:00am – CONCURRENT SESSIONS
Session 7 Rural Women and 21st-century: Liminality, Exception, and Empowerment
Sharada Srinivasan, University of Guelph, Chair
Inamul Haq, Central University of Gujarat, “Liminality of Women in 21st Century: Narratives of Half- Widows of Kashmir Valley”
Priya Chandrasekaran, Hamilton College, “Champa Dreams of Not Saving the World”
Oluwaseun Boye, Gbemisola Akanbi, and Abolanle Ogunlami, Ogun State Government, Showing and discussion of 15-minute documentary
Session 8 Girlhood and Sisterhood from Rural to Global
Sharon E. Wood, University of Nebraska at Omaha, Chair
Victoria Cosby, Queens University, “The Emotional Bond of the Dobbs Sisters from Upper Canada to India”
Meighan Mantei, Carleton University, “Head, Heart, Health and Hands: A Study of Rural Girlhood in Saskatchewan”
Anwesha Mohanty and Lavanya Suresh, Birla Institute of Technology and Science-Pilani, “When I Looked, There She Stood”
BREAK – 10:00-10:30am – “Break Time: Share Ideas about the Next Berkshire Conference”
Enjoy some early morning exploring or join others in “Break Time: Share Ideas about the Next Berkshire Conference” in the Session area of Hopin.
10:30am-12:00pm – CONCURRENT SESSIONS
Session 9 Domestic Spaces: Preserving Rural Life
Mary Larson, Oklahoma State University, Chair
Sarah Carter, University of Alberta, and Linda Mahood, University of Guelph, “Household Notes and Pretty Pictures: Women’s Homescapes in Rural Fifeshire”
Shauna McCabe, Art Gallery of Guelph, and Sally Hickson and Linda Mahood, University of Guelph, “House Museums and the Performance of Rural Domesticity: Reconstructing Lucy Maud Montgomery’s ‘Ontario Years’”
Session 10 Cookbooks and Food Experts: A Taste of Backstories: The Kitchen Table Talk Cookbook
Cynthia Prescott, University of North Dakota, Chair
Erna van Duren and Alison Crerar, University of Guelph, “Cookbooks–Exploring Economics Themes”
Sara Egge, Centre College, “Recipes as Politics: How Domestic Science and Wartime Food Shortages Shaped a Suffrage Cake”
Jenny Barker-Devine, Illinois College, “3,000 Tons to Lose: The Iowa Cooperative Extension Service, Farm Women, and Weight Control, 1948-1961”
BREAK 12:00-12:30pm
12:30-2:00pm – Special Event – Keynote Speaker: Kim Anderson, “Making Relational Space: Nokom’s House and Kitchen Table Methodologies”
2:00-3:30pm – CONCURRENT SESSIONS
Session 11 Dairying as an Occupational Identity for Women: From Farm to Factory in the Netherlands and Sweden
Lena Sommestad, Independent Scholar, Chair and Commentator
Margreet van der Burg, Wageningen University, and Liskje Flapper, NHL Stenden, “Portraits of Women Building Their Identity on ‘Modern’ Dairy Processing in The Netherlands, 1850s-1910s”
Grey Osterud, Independent Scholar, “Recollections and Photographs of Dairymaids in Interwar Sweden”
Session 12 Tales & Tables: Foodways of Eastern Montana
Jan Zauha, Montana State University, Chair
Mary Murphy, Montana State University, and Molly Kruckenberg, Montana Historical Society, “Rich Treats: Exploring Montana Foodways in a Digital Community Project”
Amy McKinney, Northwest College, “Eastern Montana Women and Food: Labor, Love, and Community”
Session 13 Rural Women and Political Action in the 1970s and 1980s
Jenny Barker-Devine, Illinois College, Chair
Kelly McMichael, American Public University, “Rural Women and County Political Offices: Feminism and Elections at the Local Level”
Jodey Nurse, McMaster University, “Dianne Harkin and Women for the Survival of Agriculture, 1975 to 1990”
Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, Iowa State University, “Crying for Help from the Kitchen Table: A Letter from the Farm Crisis of the 1980s”
BREAK – 3:30-4:00pm
Visit our Expo Hall. Relax with Some Yoga or Shake it Up with some African Dance or Line Dancing. Find those missing bits in the Scavenger Hunt.
4:00-5:00pm – CONCURRENT SESSIONS
Session 14 Women, Foodways, and Power in Arkansas
Jeannie Whayne, University of Arkansas, Chair
Kelly Houston Jones, Arkansas Tech University, “Terror at the Table: Enslaved Women, Violence, and Food”
Robyn Spears, University of Arkansas, “Arkansas Aprons: Women’s History and Food History in the Nineteenth Century”
Session 15 Regional Foodways in the 19th Century
Rebecca Beausaert, University of Guelph, Chair
Holly Kent, University of Illinois-Springfield, “‘Distinguishing Bad Eatables from Good Ones’: Food Culture and Regional, Class, and Gender Identity in the Antebellum Cookbooks of Eliza Leslie”
Theresa Mackay, University of Victoria, “We Drank Tea: Foodways at Home and Inns in Scotland’s Nineteenth-Century Rural North”
7:00-8:00pm – SESSION
Session 16 Family Farms/Family Decisions
Steven Reschly, Truman State University, Chair
Justus Hillebrand, University of Maine, “Big Ideas at the Kitchen Table: Negotiating Agricultural Innovation with Farm Families in Late Nineteenth-Century Westphalia and Maine”
Marlyn McInnerney, University of Southern Queensland, “Resilience for Women on the Land: How Rural Discourses Enable or Constrain Their Well-Being, Empowerment and Resilience”
THURSDAY, MAY 13
8:30-10:00am – CONCURRENT SESSIONS
Session 17 Nigerian Women and Mental Health
Showing and discussion of film about empowering rural women by Oluwaseun Boye, Gbemisola Akanbi, and Abolanle Ogunlami, Ogun State Government
Session 18 Recipes, Memory, and Identity
J. Sanford Rikoon, University of Missouri, Chair
Galia Hasharoni, University of Haifa, “Memories and Gefilte Fish, Longing and Lokshen: Older Women, Food, and Pioneering in Mandatory Palestine”
Madison Filzer, Sarah Lawrence College, “All Spice? Jewish Women’s Oral History as the Recipe for Brisket”
BREAK – 10:00-10:30am
Enjoy some networking with friends, old and new.
10:30am-12:00pm – CONCURRENT SESSIONS
Session 19 Rural Women Making and Breaking the Mold
Sara Morris, University of Kansas, Chair
Morgan Wilson, University of Notre Dame, “Threshing the Grain: Revealing the Lived Experience of a Late Nineteenth-Century Hoosier Farm Woman to an Early Twenty-First-Century Audience”
Jessica Spiess, Public Historian, “Brisant Le Moule: The Story of a Woman Who Broke the Mold”
Sarah Carter, University of Alberta, and Joan Heggie, Teesside University, “The Famous ‘Bachelor Girl’: Miss Jack May, Lady Farmer in England and Canada”
Session 20 Rural Women as Home Healers
Ashimolowo Olubunmi, Federal University of Agriculture-Abeokuta, Chair
Brooke Kathleen Brassard, McMaster University, “Living Rooms and Kitchen Medicines: Latter- Day Saints in Southern Alberta, Domestic Spaces, and Rituals of Healing, 1887-1947”
Bose Adebanjo, Nigerian Government, “Women Choose Life, Stay Aware: A presentation about breast cancer awareness”
Session 21 The Food We Eat, the Stories We Tell: Kitchen Table Talk from Appalachia
Kathryn Engle, University of Kentucky, Chair
Crystal Wilkinson, University of Kentucky, Annette Clapsaddle, Swain County High School
Elizabeth Engelhardt, University of North Carolina, Lora Smith, Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky, Emily Hilliard, West Virginia Humanities Council,
12:00-2:00pm – SPECIAL EVENT- RWSA BUSINESS MEETING
Newcomers are welcome to attend.
12:30-2:00pm – Launch of “What Canada Ate” exhibit and website in Expo Hall, a tribute to Anita Stewart, founder of Cuisine Canada and Food Day Canada
2:00-3:30pm – CONCURRENT SESSIONS
Session 22 Politics Begin in the Kitchen
Kelly Houston Jones, Arkansas Tech University, Chair
Lynne Benson, University of Massachusetts-Boston, “‘Victory is in the Kitchen’: How Women Triumphed from the Suffrage Movement to World War II”
Jennifer Helton, Ohlone College, “Suffrage at the Kitchen Table”
Elizabeth Almlie, South Dakota State Historical Society, “Food History and the Suffrage Movement in South Dakota”
Pearl Young, Kennesaw State University, “Reputation and Pride: Advocating Secession from the Kitchen Table”
Session 23 From Rural Hearth to Cookstove, Sponsored by the Culinary Historians of Canada
Julia Armstrong, Culinary Historians of Canada, Chair
Chantal Vechambre, Culinary Historians of Canada, “How Did French Women Cook in Atlantic Canada in the Early Decades of Settlement?”
Gary Gillman, Culinary Historians of Canada, “Margaret Simpson: Pioneer Publican-Brewer of Upper Canada”
Fiona Lucas, Culinary Historians of Canada, “Catharine Parr Traill’s Nine Kitchens” John Ota, Culinary Historians of Canada, “Maud’s Kitchen”
Session 24 Selling Produce, Navigating Markets
Margaret Thomas Evans, Indiana University East, Chair
Debra Reid, The Henry Ford Museum, “Farm Women in Urban Public Markets”
Kathryn Beasley, Independent Scholar, “The Unexpected Cash Lifeline of Curb Markets and Clay County Baskets: Rural Alabama Women, Home Demonstration, and Creating Income, 1914-1929”
Maureen Thompson, Florida International University, “Navigating Gender Norms: Late Nineteenth- Century Pioneering Commercial Seedswomen”
BREAK – 3:30-4:00pm – “Break Time: Share Ideas about Publishing”
Have some time to relax or join others in the “Break Time: Share Ideas about Publishing” in the Session area of Hopin.
FRIDAY, MAY 14
8:30-10:00am – CONCURRENT SESSIONS
Session 25 Rural Women’s Mental and Physical Health
Katherine Jellison, Ohio University, Chair
Sarah Holland, University of Nottingham, “Women and Mental Health in Farming and Rural Society, England in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century”
Karol Weaver, Susquehanna University, “‘Mental and Physical Health Sufficient to Meet the Demands’: Psychiatric Nursing Education in Rural Pennsylvania”
Olubunmi Ashimolowo, Olatunbosun Soetan, and Oluwatoyin Abati, Federal University of Agriculture- Abeokuta, “Assessment of Use of Contraceptives among Female Agriculture Undergraduates in Federal University of Agriculture-Abeokuta”
Session 26 Rural Women: Recipes and Remembering, Sponsored by the Culinary Historians of Canada
Julia Armstrong, Culinary Historians of Canada, Chair
Carolyn Crawford, Culinary Historians of Canada, “Picking ‘Berrys’: Out of Five Old Chinguacousy Kitchens”
Suzanne Evans, Culinary Historians of Canada, “Biography of THE FIVE ROSES COOK BOOK (1932), Aid to POW Ethel Mulvany”
Nathalie Cooke, McGill University, “Sharing Food and Fun, But Not All the Recipe Ingredients” BREAK – 10:00-10:30am – “Break Time: Share Experiences with Online Teaching”
Time to search for those missing last few pieces in your Scavenger Hunt or join in the “Break Time:
Share Experiences with Online Teaching,” in the Session area of Hopin.
10:30am-12:00pm – CONCURRENT SESSIONS
Session 27 Food on the Rural Canadian Homefront, Sponsored by the Culinary Historians of Canada
Julia Armstrong, Culinary Historians of Canada, Chair
Samantha George, Parkwood National Historic Site, “Jam for Britain 1940-1945 Campaign: Grassroots Initiative to National Campaign”
Bonnie Sitter and Shirleyan English, Culinary Historians of Canada, “Onion Skins and Peach Fuzz: Memories of Ontario Farmerettes”
Session 28 Food, Family, and Poverty in the US
April Bullock, California State University, Fullerton, Chair
Megan Birk, University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley, “Stock the Larder for Institutional-Scale Cooking at Poor Farms and Almshouses in the United States”
Mary Larson, Oklahoma State University, “Comfort and Bond: Food and Relationship During the Dust Bowl”
Yvette R. Blair-Lavallais, Memphis Theological Seminary, “Scrimpin’ and Scrapin’: Examining Women and Food Insecurity in Rural Texas”
Session 29 A Daughter
A live reading of A Daughter, a one-act play by Kim Blackwell. Directed by Lindy Finlan. Featuring Linda Kash and Peyton LeBarr.
12:00-2:00pm – SPECIAL EVENT – Collecting COVID Stories, a Roundtable
Cynthia Prescott, University of North Dakota, Chair
Samantha Benn-Duke, Northeastern State University, “Experiences in the Time of COVID-19: Rural Indian Education Leadership in Oklahoma”
Virginia Scharff, University of New Mexico, “Doing the Heavy Lifting: Gender Roles and Consumption in the Age of COVID-19”
Rebecca Stoil, Clemson University, “Clay, Covid and Matzah Balls: An [Im]Perfect Passover in a New Home”
Krista Lynn Minnotte, University of North Dakota, and Samantha K. Ammons, University of Nebraska- Omaha, “‘I Recorded Lectures in my Closet’: Working from Home Gender Dynamics among Faculty Women during COVID-19”
2:00-3:30pm – CONCURRENT SESSIONS
Session 30 Passionate and Personal: “non-feminist” Rural Labour’s Broader Implications
Sarah Carter, University of Alberta, Chair
Tracey Hanshew, Washington State University Tri-Cities, “‘CowBelles A Callin’: From the Kitchen to Congress.”
Shelby Blair Martens, University of New Brunswick, “‘They’ll have to get a boyfriend who is a farmer’: Labour, Gender and Religion on Southern Alberta Family Farms”
Diane McKenzie, University of Lethbridge, “‘What’s Love Got to Do With It?: Women’s Participation in the Intergenerational Transfer of Family Farms”
Session 31 Reading Between the Lines: Women, Literature, and the Kitchen Table in Twentieth Century Rural and Prairie Canada
Elyssa Ford, Northwest Missouri State University, Chair
Kesia Kvill, University of Guelph, “Making a Clean and Modern Kitchen: Rural Kitchens and Technology in the Early Twentieth Century”
Emily Kaliel, University of Guelph, “‘Steam, Don’t Boil’: Reworking Cooking Practices and Nutritional Standards in the Women’s Pages of the Western Producer, 1925-1939”
Cheryl Troupe, University of Saskatchewan, “Metis Women Speak Up: Reading for Women’s Political Activist Voices in New Breed Magazine in the 1970s”
3:00-5:00pm – Musical Performance by Mary Parkinson – Main Stage
Join musician and music therapist, Mary Parkinson, for some beautiful music.
SATURDAY, MAY 15
8:30-10:00am – CONCURRENT SESSIONS
Session 32 What’s on the Table
Abolanle Ogunlami, Oluwaseun Boye, and Gbemisola Akanbi, Ogun State Government, A demonstration of how to prepare Nigerian cereal referred to in Yoruba as “OGI”
Session 33 Social Action and Identity Building
Sara Epp, University of Guelph, Chair
Katje Armentrout, Purdue University, “The Future of Farming is Female”
Casandra Bryant, University of Guelph, “A Conceptual Framework for Rural Women Social Entrepreneurs”
Tanya Watson, National University of Ireland, “Women of the Farm: Property Ownership and Gender on Family Farms in Ireland”
BREAK – 10:00-10:30am – “Break Time: Grad Student Get-together”
Hand in your Scavenger Hunt clipboard to he******@uo******.caor join others in the “Break Time: Grad Student Get-together,” in the Session area of Hopin.
10:30am-12:00am – SPECIAL EVENT: Mentorship and Development Networks for Rural Women and Researchers
Casandra Bryant, University of Guelph, Chair Joan Craig, Ag Women’s Network
Andrea Gal, Wilton Consulting Group
Debra Reid, The Henry Ford Museum
Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, Iowa State University Ashleigh Weeden, University of Guelph
12:00-2:00pm – SPECIAL EVENT – Farm Show – Main Stage 2:00-3:30pm – CONCURRENT SESSIONS
Session 34 Leaders in Extension Service and Agricultural Journalism
Cherisse Jones-Branch, Arkansas State University, Chair
Kymara Sneed, Mississippi State University, “Toeing the Line: An Analysis of Sadye Wier’s Work Within Mississippi’s Cooperative Extension Service”
Sara Morris, University of Kansas, “Putting Food on the Kitchen Table: Evelyn Harris’ Side Hustle”
Heather Mitchell, University of Guelph, “The Past, Present, and Future of Canadian Women’s Food Preservation Skills”
Session 35 Fellowship in the Digital Age: Rural Women, Community, and Social Media
Holly Kent, University of Illinois-Springfield, Chair
Margaret Thomas Evans, Indiana University East, “Out of the Box: Recipes Shared Across Media by Members of the Women’s Institute in Great Britain”
Alejandra de Arce, National University of Quilmes, and Marina Poggi, National University of Quimes, “Argentine Rural Women on Instagram: Virtual Sociability and Identities in Tension”
BREAK – 3:30-4:00pm – “Break Time: Sharing Ideas about the Next RWSA Conference”
We welcome your ideas about the next RWSA conference so join us in “Break Time: Sharing Ideas about the Next RWSA Conference,” in the Session area of Hopin.
4:00-5:00pm – Social Hour in the “Lounge” in Sessions
Have on hand your favourite drink, tea, coffee, or something stronger!
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This conference would not be possible without the generous support of our sponsors:
Farms.Com
Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation College of Arts, University of Guelph Arrell Food Institute, University of Guelph
McLaughlin Library, Archival & Special Collections, University of Guelph Ontario Agricultural College, University of Guelph
Department of History, University of Guelph
School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, Ontario Agricultural College, University of Guelph
The Agricultural History Society
Regional and Rural Broadband (R2B2), School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, University of Guelph
School of English and Theatre Studies, College of Arts, University of Guelph McGill-Queen’s University Press
Federated Women’s Institutes of Canada (FWIC/WI)
The Association of Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums (ALHFAM) Guelph Museums
Roothams Gourmet
The Francis and Ruth Redelmeier Professorship in Rural History
The Rural Women’s Studies Association’s triennial conference has gone virtual. Register today!
We will miss gathering in person this year. But going virtual means that you can join us from anywhere in the world with an internet connection, including your own kitchen! Travel time and costs are no barrier to participating in this online conference. Please attend, and bring your friends and colleagues. This is a great opportunity for producers and grassroots activists to join us.
The conference website is now available. Check out the conference program, including keynote speaker Kim Anderson, plenary session on rural mentoring, and much more!
University of Lethbridge graduate student Diane McKenzie is combining her rural roots and her research interests with the intention to make an important contribution to the future of agriculture.
A farmer from Warner, Alta., McKenzie is a student in the cultural, social and political thought (CSPT) program at the University of Lethbridge. She is investigating the intergenerational transfer of the family farm from rural women’s perspective.
“I was inspired by a friend who works as a facilitator for farm families in transition,” says McKenzie. “He suggested I consider doing facilitation work after graduation. About the same time, through history courses, I became more cognizant of the neglected history of women and girls and recognized myself as a participant in a system that is disadvantageous for women and girls.”
McKenzie actively farms with her family and brings an insider view to her post-modern feminist analysis of rural women’s oral histories.
Majoring in psychology and minoring in history, McKenzie’s goal in her master’s program is to open a well-informed conversation about gendered processes with agrarian women and men within their immediate communities to further support rural women’s participation and successful transfers of family business where all parties are satisfied with the outcomes.
“I went to women to hear boots-on-the-ground stories,” she says. “I wanted to hear their story, their perspective and how they participated in the intergenerational transfer of family farms.”
Striving to understand her own and other’s circumstance in the business and life of family farming, McKenzie is shining new light on an area that has not been widely studied.
“Dr. Carol Williams and Dr. Heidi MacDonald were key in my decision to pursue graduate studies at the University of Lethbridge. By offering me opportunities to be involved in exciting history and oral history projects during my undergrad studies and by demonstrating how my area of interest could be expanded on in a graduate program made the decision to pursue graduate studies much clearer and imaginable.”
Her work can apply to further learning and awareness, systemic change, the advancement of women and girls, and innovative practices for men and boys within the agriculture community and the business of agriculture. And it is an important step toward making positive change.
“It’s difficult to change ourselves or change much of anything unless we’re aware of the system we’re working in,” Diane says. “If we’re aware of how we participate contemporarily we can imagine a different way of participating in the future.”
Republished from the University of Lethbridge School of Graduate Studies. The original post is available here.
Editor’s Note: Bina Agarwal’s essay is republished from Outlook: The Fully Loaded Magazine. We believe that her perspective on women farmers in India will be of great interest to our readers. We hope that it will inspire RWSA members and our readers to write opinion pieces on national, regional, and state policies related to their areas of expertise.
Photograph By Suresh K. Pandey
The Chief Justice of India’s recent remarks suggesting women have no place in the ongoing farmers’ protests may have gone unnoticed in the 1960s. Today they appear astonishing in their lack of awareness about what the face of the Indian farmer looks like. Women are protesting alongside men because they too have stakes in the outcomes. Indeed, their stakes are bigger—in rural India, 73 per cent of female workers (and only 55 per cent of male workers) depend on agriculture. It’s high time women farmers were seen and heard in their own right by policy-makers and law enforcers. After all, they are the backbone of India’s agriculture and allied sectors, performing a wide range of tasks in crop cultivation as well as in management of livestock, fisheries, poultry and non-timber forest produce. In cultivation, they do much of the non-mechanised back-breaking work, especially in rice farming, such as transplanting, weeding and harvesting. They comprise an estimated 60 per cent of the workforce in livestock production and 32 per cent of the 13.5 million employed in aquaculture.
Statistics, however, largely fail to capture the diversity and intensity of women’s work. In 2005, women comprised 40 per cent of our agricultural work force (National Sample Survey 2004-05). This fell to 30 per cent in 2017-18 (Periodic Labour Force Survey), even though significantly more men than women migrated to non-farm jobs. Why are women’s contributions undercounted? First, it depends on what we consider as work. If we count only paid work, rural women’s work participation rate (in both farm and non-farm work) comes to 17.5 per cent (NSS 2011-12). But adding home-based production, self-employment and declared unemployment makes it 64.8 per cent.
Secondly, women are seen as farm helpers rather than as farmers in their own right. Women become de facto farm managers when men shift to non-farm jobs, but are not recognised as such because they seldom own the farm. The assumption that women are dependents also affects who inherits land. My recent research showed that in 2014, averaging across nine states, only 14 per cent of all landowners were women, owning only 11 per cent of land in landowning rural households. They typically inherited land from deceased husbands rather than from fathers, despite the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005, giving daughters and sons equal rights in agricultural land.
Treating women farmers as housewives, as implied in the CJI’s comments, also has consequences for farm productivity. Even when they are effectively managing the farms, women face a strongly male-biased scenario in terms of access to credit, information on new technology and practices, irrigation, inputs and markets. A 2019 study in Science found that agricultural information delivered via cell-phones increased the odds of farmers adopting recommended inputs by 22 per cent and yields by 4 per cent across countries, including India. But women are less likely to gain from such developments as fewer women than men own mobile phones, and even fewer have internet access. These gender gaps will adversely affect our productivity and growth. Analysing global evidence, the Food and Agriculture Organization found in 2011 that if women farmers had the same access as men to land and other inputs, farm yields could be 20-30 per cent higher and agricultural growth rates 2.5-4 per cent greater in developing countries.
This bias can be overcome to a fair extent if women cultivate in groups by jointly leasing in land and/or pooling their small plots, combining their labour and capital, and sharing costs and benefits. As a group, they can obtain credit via NABARD’s Joint Liability Group scheme, gain from scale economies, save on hired labour and sell their produce profitably. My research in Kerala showed that the sampled all-women group farms had, on average, almost twice the annual value of output per hectare and five times the net returns per farm compared with the mostly male-managed individual family farms. And 87 per cent of some 31,000 group farms harvesting in March 2020 survived economically under the stringent Covid lockdown, unlike most individual farms. Beyond Kerala (which has over 68,000 women’s group farms), women have also begun group farming in Gujarat, Bihar and West Bengal, with visible benefits.
(The writer is professor of development economics and environment, GDI, University of Manchester, UK. Views are personal.)
A PDF of Agarwal’s original essay is available for download.
For the past half century, Caroline Schimmel has collected narratives of women overcoming obstacles in the wilderness. When she began collecting books by and about women, few scholars, librarians and dealers paid any attention to these subjects. Over time, she began to add artifacts associated with adventurous women, including sharpshooter Annie Oakley’s gloves.
Color photo of Libby Custer, Collection of Caroline Schimmel.
Schimmel’s collection now totals nearly 24,000 volumes covering more than three centuries, recounting American women’s adventures throughout the globe.
In the spirit of those adventuring women, Schimmel assembled a museum exhibit in which she shared a small sampling of her rich collection of books, photographs, manuscripts, and material culture. She also designed her own exhibit catalog, which she graciously shares with our readers here in electronic form. Hard copies of this volume may be ordered from Oaknoll Press. Schimmel donated the fiction portion of her collection to the University of Pennsylvania’s Special Collections library in 2014.
The Rural Women’s Studies Association (RWSA) endorses the following statement from the Agricultural History Society (AHS). For decades the AHS and RWSA have sustained members seeking to increase understanding of historic failing. In addition, the RWSA calls attention to the particularly heavy toll that COVID-19 is exacting on rural women of color as frontline workers. We recognize that women of color have disproportionately filled the ranks of those rural women who earn a living as agricultural laborers and as meat and poultry plant workers. Recent statistics from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, for instance, show that 42% of U.S. frontline meat packing workers are female in a total workforce that is 44.4% Latinx, 25.2% Black, and 10% Asian/Asian Pacific Islander. The agricultural field and factory laborers who supply our food chain perform low-paying, dangerous work and are subject to chemical contamination, workplace injuries, and now exposure to COVID-19. It is with these facts in mind that the RWSA endorses the AHS statement.
AGRICULTURAL HISTORY SOCIETY’S STATEMENT ON COVID-19 AND POLICE VIOLENCE
3 June 2020
The Agricultural History Society shares the weight and anguish that our entire community is carrying. The novel coronavirus has claimed the lives of more than 100,000 Americans, and about 400,000 people worldwide. As scholars, public historians, and librarians, we hail from, live among, or write about rural and agricultural people. We are particularly attuned to the disproportionate toll this pandemic has taken on the lives of rural essential workers around the world. They are the workers who grow and gather the world’s harvest. They raise, feed, and slaughter the meat some of us eat. They do the dirtiest, most dangerous jobs in poultry and pork processing plants. In the United States, they were forced to continue working under an executive order. They work in the warehouses and drive the trucks that stock our stores. They are African descended, white, Latinx, Native American, immigrant, straight and queer. They do essential work yet, too often, lack a living wage, access to nutritious food, health care, transportation, and quality education. Magnifying the racism and inequality of the United States, African Americans, Native Americans, and Latinx people are disproportionately represented among those who have died.
Against the backdrop of this global pandemic, we have been moved to anger and despair over the killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of the police and, in the case of Ahmaud Arbery, lawless vigilantes. We mourn the loss of Arbery, Taylor, and Floyd. The police kill African Americans like these latest victims at a rate more than double that of white Americans. They kill Latinx Americans at a rate nearly double that of white Americans. People tend to view brutality and murder at the hands of the police and vigilantes as urban phenomena. Agricultural historians know, however, that these acts of violence and inhumanity have deep and enduring roots in the countryside, including victims of lynching and other forms of violence in sundown towns, both in the American South and North. Racist violence has deep roots as a tool to profit from the agricultural labor of rural people.
Members of the Agricultural History Society reaffirm our commitment to using our work to help improve the lives of the farmers and agricultural workers risking their lives to feed us. We also affirm our support for protesters around the country and throughout the world who are raising their voices for humanity and transformative change. In the tradition of rural people, they are fighting for human rights and, like George Floyd, simply striving to breathe.
Hosted by the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada
“Kitchen Table Talk to Global Forum”
Due to the circumstances resulting from COVID-19, the 2021 RWSA Triennial Conference is going virtual. Although we regret that we cannot meet in person as originally planned, we are excited about the opportunity to host a virtual conference that allows for a more diverse range of panel presentations and participants. Any paper and panel submissions that have already been made will still be considered, however, we have extended the deadline to allow for additional submissions to be made until September 30, 2020.
The theme “Kitchen Table Talk to Global Forum” emphasizes how conversations, relationships, and food shape rural communities. This theme allows for the consideration of the ways that gendered, sexual, ethnic, and racial identities affect personal power, class consciousness, individual choice, and community development. These subjects lend themselves to the exploration of rural activism, social justice, innovation, politics, business development, cultural expression, self-governance, and collective experiences — both historical and contemporary — in local, regional, national, and global settings.
RWSA is an international association founded in 1997 to promote and advance farm and rural women’s/gender studies in a historical perspective by encouraging research, promoting scholarship, and establishing and maintaining links with organizations that share these goals. 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, and history.
Presentations take many forms at this virtual RWSA conference. Possibilities include workshops, panel sessions, virtual tours, interactive sessions, roundtable discussions, poster presentations, open-mic discussions, performances, readings, and audiovisual presentations. As much as possible, presentations and conference activities will take place in a synchronous environment. Virtual tours, posters, or other forms of presentations may be pre-recorded with the consent of the program committee.
The RWSA encourages inter-, trans- or multi-disciplinary approaches that connect rural women’s/gender history and present-day concerns. The RWSA seeks to integrate creative work with the conference theme, and we encourage artists working in visual, film, performative, and literary genres to submit their ideas to make the conference most dynamic.
The theme: “Kitchen Table Talk to Global Forum” encourages exploration of several sub-themes:
Women and mental health
Women and food justice
Indigenous rural women
Women and food tourism
Women and technological and biological innovation (media, healthcare, equipment)
What’s on the table (food production, preparation, rituals, hospitality, etiquette, and display)
The University of Guelph is known as Canada’s Food University and has gained international recognition for its impact on agricultural sciences and rural life.
Please submit the following information by 30 September 2020.
Title of paper/panel/poster/workshop/performance (working title is acceptable).
200-word description/abstract of paper, panel, poster, workshop, performance, etc.
Brief vita/bio of presenter or panel participants and complete contact information for all.
Please indicate if your panel or workshop proposal does not fit in a typical session time of 1.5 hours. We will contact you if your proposal has been accepted.
Submissions should be sent electronically (as a single Word document or combined PDF) to: RW******@gm***.com
Program Committee Co-chairs: Katherine Jellison, Ohio University, and Jenny Barker-Devine, Illinois College
Program Committee Members: Margaret Thomas-Evans, Jodey Nurse-Gupta, Tracey Hanshew, Amy McKinney, Cathy Wilson.
Social distancing. Shelter in place. Runs on toilet paper and sanitizing wipes. Schools and houses of worship indefinitely. Life in the midst of a global pandemic is unfamiliar and even frightening. The spread of COVID-19 virus is teaching many of us living in urban places just how connected we are to one another, and how divorced we have become from rural life. But as the coronavirus spreads, the impact of virus-related disruptions will also have profound impacts on households located at great distances from one another—and from big-box stores’ massive supply chains.
Aisle for bread and other items at a Jewel supermarket in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of Chicago on 13 March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo by I JethroBT / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
It is already changing our eating habits. Throughout the United States, store shelves are stripped bear of bread, pasta and baking supplies. Restaurants are closing their dining rooms. For those with sufficient resources, stress-baking and stress-eating (and drinking) is increasingly commonplace. Others face growing hardships. School cafeterias are closed, and many are searching for ways to continue to feed hungry children who rely on school nutrition programs for most of their meals.
Amid this global crisis, and as many of us must adjust to teaching and working remotely, our work continues on Backstories: The Kitchen Table Talk Cookbook. To those essays already planned, we also seek to document experiences of shifting foodways in the midst of global pandemic.
Help us document how COVID-19 is impacting you and your community. Send us your thoughts and experiences, whether 5 words, 50, or 500 or more. Send us recipes—and images!—of foods you are consuming as the virus spreads. Document your family’s impromptu baking competition, or your creativity with canned and dried foods. Comment on this post, or email your thoughts to: RW**********@gm***.com
. We’ll share your contributions in Backstories and/or on our social media accounts, and archive them for future generations.
“Kitchen Table Talk to Global Forum” is the topic of next year’s triennial conference, a theme that inspired us to compile a cookbook featuring essays and recipes reflecting sociocultural aspects of food and its production, and samples of our members’ culinary heritage (The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota, publisher).
Many thanks to those who have already submitted essays, recipes, and images. We are seeking additional recipes in a number of categories including main courses, salads, appetizers, baked goods, and desserts. These might be recipes you’ve encountered through your research, or your own family favorite. If the recipe has been handed down, we encourage you to include a brief backstory and photo of the item.
Luca Nebuloni from Milan, Italy [CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]
Chances are your grandmother did not have a recipe for avocado toast, but we are aiming to publish a cookbook that also reflects modern eating habits. Vegetarian and vegan recipes are better for the environment and our health as well. Perhaps you’ve tweaked a recipe in order to produce a healthier version of that dish. Feel free to submit both the original and updated versions.
Finally, we aspire to produce a cookbook that reflects the global diversity of our organization and the globalization of foodways. Please consider including your favorite recipe in the publication. Submissions are due April 1, 2020.
