Baseball History and Rural America
Baseball's creation myth is bunk, and historians have shown how important cities were to the game's development. But it was still a rural passion.
How Reading Got Farm Women Through the Depression
They worked over sixty hours a week but were also insatiable readers.
The Latent Racism of the Better Homes in America Program
How Better Homes in America—a collaboration between Herbert Hoover and the editor of a conservative women’s magazine—promoted idealized whiteness.
Who Was Elsie, besides the World’s Most Famous Cow?
In the Great Depression, Borden sought a new spokescow to help preserve its traditional agrarian image.
The End of the Country Road
When "good roads" first became a political issue, rural people were decidedly not the ones advocating for them.
Speaking for Rural America, 100 Years Ago
In the early 20th century, the Country Life Movement tried to make rural life appeal to women. But it ignored many truths about farms and women alike.
Bees and the World-Wide Farming Web
Connections between beekeepers in the 17th and 18th centuries created the early “world-wide farming web”—a way to share information across long distances.
The Feminist Evolution of the Iowa Porkettes
In Iowa, between 1964 and 1991, groups of women—the wives of pork farmers—boosted the supposed benefits of pork-heavy diets. They were the Iowa Porkettes.
The Forgotten Movement That Changed American Women’s Lives
Chatauquas changed the lives of Midwestern women between 1878 and 1900, setting the stage for new gender roles in the twentieth century.