“Kitchen Table Talk to Global Forum”

RWSA Triennial Conference

May 13-15, 2021

University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada

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 RWSA conferences, including workshops, panel sessions, tours, interactive sessions, roundtable discussions, poster presentations, open-mic discussions, performances, readings, and audiovisual presentations. 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 subthemes:
● 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)
● Women’s Table talk (issues concerning family, community, politics, legislation, and
markets)

Located an hour’s drive west of Toronto, 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 31 May 2020:
1. Title of paper/panel/poster/workshop/performance (working title is acceptable).
2. 200-word description/abstract of paper, panel, poster, workshop, performance, etc.
3. Brief vita/bio of presenter or panel participants and complete contact information
for all.

Please indicate if your proposal does not fit in the regular session time of 1.5 hours with three presentations and discussion. 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.

For information on travel grants and letters of invitation, contact Catharine A. Wilson at
ca******@uo******.ca.

For additional information on the RWSA, please go to the organization
website (https://www.ohio.edu/cas/history/institutes-associations/rwsa/).