Representing the Rural: Food, Modernity, and Everyday Realities

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Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary

This panel examines the meanings and representations of rural America in the discourse of twentieth-century advertising and in contemporary oral history and images. Nyoka Hawkins will explore the emergence of mass advertising in the 1920s where contrasting images of a sophisticated urban metropolis and a backward rural countryside were central to a new discourse of modernity. The farms and small towns of rural America were either pastoral idylls with old-fashioned grandmas, or uncivilized spaces populated by rubes, hicks, hillbillies, and hayseeds. Urban life was dependent on the food and resources of the countryside but physically and culturally separated from it. Traditional homemaking techniques such as cooking, canning, and gardening were dismissed as anachronistic drudgery. “The modern homemaker,” home economist Christine Frederick declared in 1929, “is no longer a cook. She’s a can opener.” The consumer economy continues today but new discourses and practices around food and modernity are emerging. Recently, urban gardening, in backyards and community plots, has been on the increase. Farmers' markets and CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) have proliferated. These are auspicious developments, heralded by citizens and governments alike. It is “cool” to be part of this growing local food movement, as gardener and consumer. In the midst of this urban renewal, rural gardeners have continued to grow vegetables at home but without similar notice and support. In the absence of such attention, Kate Black will focus her presentation on creating a portrait, using photographs and excerpts from oral histories, of gardeners living in Kentucky’s rural spaces.

 
Mar 30th, 8:30 AM Mar 30th, 9:45 AM

Representing the Rural: Food, Modernity, and Everyday Realities

Corbly Hall 465

This panel examines the meanings and representations of rural America in the discourse of twentieth-century advertising and in contemporary oral history and images. Nyoka Hawkins will explore the emergence of mass advertising in the 1920s where contrasting images of a sophisticated urban metropolis and a backward rural countryside were central to a new discourse of modernity. The farms and small towns of rural America were either pastoral idylls with old-fashioned grandmas, or uncivilized spaces populated by rubes, hicks, hillbillies, and hayseeds. Urban life was dependent on the food and resources of the countryside but physically and culturally separated from it. Traditional homemaking techniques such as cooking, canning, and gardening were dismissed as anachronistic drudgery. “The modern homemaker,” home economist Christine Frederick declared in 1929, “is no longer a cook. She’s a can opener.” The consumer economy continues today but new discourses and practices around food and modernity are emerging. Recently, urban gardening, in backyards and community plots, has been on the increase. Farmers' markets and CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) have proliferated. These are auspicious developments, heralded by citizens and governments alike. It is “cool” to be part of this growing local food movement, as gardener and consumer. In the midst of this urban renewal, rural gardeners have continued to grow vegetables at home but without similar notice and support. In the absence of such attention, Kate Black will focus her presentation on creating a portrait, using photographs and excerpts from oral histories, of gardeners living in Kentucky’s rural spaces.