RHN 49/2021 | Event
Organiser: Rural Women’s Studies Association (RWSA)
11–15 May 2021, Virtual Conference / University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Registration deadline: 9 May 2021
RWSA 2021 Virtual Conference
Kitchen Table Talk to Global Forum
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
BREAK - 10:00-10:30am - Break Time: Share Experiences with Online Teaching
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
Source and more information on the conference program: https://ruralwomensstudies.wordpress.com/2021/04/21/rwsa-2021-virtual-conference-program/
Conference website: https://www.rwsa2021.uoguelph.ca/