CFP: Iowa Agriculture from “The Golden Age” to World War II, 1900 to 1940

Iowa Agriculture from “The Golden Age” to World War II, 1900 to 1940
September 26-27, 2025
State Historical Building, Des Moines, Iowa 

The years between 1900 and 1940 witnessed important changes in agriculture and rural life in Iowa. Farm families adopted and adapted to new technologies for farm and home, war and depression, and increased government involvement in their lives. Conference organizers seek papers that reflect the rural experience in Iowa (broadly conceived) during the 1900-1940 period, in hopes of exposing new topics or providing fresh examinations of old ones. Important archival material that has come into the archives over the past decades and new approaches and methods have become commonplace. 

Guiding questions include: 

• What was life like for Iowa’s rural people during this period of rapid social, technological, and economic, and political change?

• How did people shape rural institutions, policy, and the landscape and, in turn, how did they respond to those changes? 

• What were the fault lines in rural society (race, class, gender) and how did Iowans accommodate those divisions, close them, or widen them?

• How did people respond to challenges (weather, commodity prices, poverty, policy, etc.)?

Conference organizers seek papers on:

• Popular culture (entertainment, radio, hunting, courtship)

• Labor (family, hired help, migrant workers)

• The seed industry in Iowa

• Land tenure, succession, foreclosures

• Family (gender roles, youth culture, labor, leisure)

• Race (tenure, farming, community building, racial oppression) 

• Indigenous farming and culture

• Environment and land use (crop patterns, fertilizer, weather)

• Role of different levels of government (relief, FSA, REA, commodity programs)

• Cooperative Extension

• Rural industries (canning, milling) 

Please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words and a one-page CV to Joe Anderson at jlanderson@mtroyal.ca by August 1, 2024. Those who are accepted will have until September 1, 2025 to prepare a manuscript of no more than 7,500 words (excluding notes). Completed manuscripts will be circulated in advance of the symposium, which will be an in-person event held on September 26-27, 2025 in Des Moines. Presenters will be asked to submit revised and edited versions of their papers by February 1, 2026. The conference organizers are planning  two edited volumes based on a selection of the conference papers. Conference organizers are: Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, Andrew Klumpp, Leo Landis, and Joe Anderson.