The two-day conference plans to address, from a multidisciplinary perspective, the roles, experiences, struggles and triumphs of women in rural context around the world, according to Dr. Laura Michele Diener, conference chair, Marshall University associate professor of history and director of women’s studies.
“Our theme is founded in the critique, introduced by feminist scholar Sherry Ortner (1974), of the pervasive view that women are inherently and irrevocably connected to nature,” said Diener. “This idea’s corollary is that culture – read as progress, development technology – is men’s work. But research has increasingly shown that women play a central role, not only in sustaining rural life, but also in the development and economic stability of ever-changing rural communities.
“By examining perspectives on rurality throughout history as well as in the contemporary world – in which it is arguably a declining state – this conference will explore the gendered aspects of rurality and its vicissitudes within the neoliberal, global landscape,” said Diener.
Marshall’s Dr. Robert Bookwalter, Dr. Penny Koonz and Sabrina Thomas, as well as Carter Taylor Seaton and Joan Browning, will moderate, while panelists will include independent researchers and women from Marshall, West Virginia University, Fairmont State University and West Virginia Wesleyan College. Award-winning author Pamela Smith Hill will provide a keynote address titled “Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Enduring Literary Legacy of a Missouri Farm Woman” at 6:30 p.m. Friday, April 7, in Brad D. Smith Foundation Hall.
Hill’s nonfiction work focuses on the fascinating life of Laura Ingalls Wilder. In 2007, she published Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer’s Life, which won the Indie Excellence Award in 2008 and in 2014, she edited Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography. She has also written several young adult novels including The Last Grail Keeper and has taught creative and professional writing at universities in Colorado, Washington, and Portland, Oregon, where she continues to teach and write.
For more information about the conference or to see the program, visit www.marshall.edu/womenstu.