The New Rural History: A Brief Reading List

Argersinger, Peter H. "The People's Past: Teaching American Rural History." The History Teacher 10(3)(May 1977): 403-424.

Barron, Hal S. "Rediscovering the Majority: The New Rural History of the Nineteenth Century North." Historical Methods 19(4)(Fall 1986): 141-152.

Danbom, David B. "The Professors and the Plowmen in American History Today." Wisconsin Magazine of History 69(2)(Winter 1985-86): 106-128.

Riney-Kehrberg, Pamela. "Women, Technology, and Rural Life: Some Recent Literature." Technology and Culture 38(4)(October 1997): 943-953.

Schwieder, Dorothy. "The New Rural History: A Subject Whose Time has Come." The Historian 58(4)(Summer 1996): 844-849.

Swierenga, Robert P. "The New Rural History: Defining the Parameters." Great Plains Quarterly 1(4)(Fall 1981): 211-223.

__________. "Theoretical Perspectives on the New Agricultural History: From Environmentalism to Modernization." Agricultural History 56(3)(July 1982): 495-502.

Vaught, David. "State of the Art--Rural History, or Why Is There No Rural History of California?" Agricultural History 74(4)(Fall 2000): 759-774.

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Book-length Treatments

Barron, Hal S. Mixed Harvest: The Second Great Transformation in the Rural North, 1870-1930. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. The most sweeping synthesis of the new rural history.

Danbom, David B. Born in the Country: A History of Rural America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. A narrative of rural history which draws heavily from the new rural history.

Faragher, John Mack. Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. One of the first (and best) studies using new rural history techniques.

Hurt, R. Douglas. American Agriculture: A Brief History. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1994. More about agricultural history than rural history, but with tons of good information.

Jellison, Katherine. Entitled to Power: Farm Women and Technology, 1913-1963. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993. An interpretation of the role of women on American farms in the early twentieth century.

Kline, Ronald R. Consumers in the Country: Technology and Social Change in Rural America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. A synthesis like Barron's, but focusing on technology.

Neth, Mary. Preserving the Family Farm: Women, Community, and the Foundations of Agribusiness in the Midwest, 1900-1940. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. Another excellent study.

McMurry, Sally. Families and Farmhouses in Nineteenth Century America: Vernacular Design and Social Change. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997. (First published Oxford University Press, 1988.) A fascinating look at farmers though the lens of farmhouse architecture.

__________. Transforming Rural Life: Dairying Families and Agricultural Change, 1820-1885. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. The new rural history in New York, not the Midwest.

Vaught, David. Cultivating California: Growers, Specialty Crops, and Labor, 1875-1920. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. The new rural history in California.

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Internet Resources

Agricultural History Society.

Agricultural History. Quarterly journal.

The Center for Agricultural History at Iowa State University

The Conner Prairie Rural History Project. A collection of historical documents about a rural county in Indiana.

H-RURAL. The H-Net discussion list for Rural and Agricultural Historians

Living History Farms, Des Moines, Iowa.

Midwest Old Threshers Reunion, Mount Pleasant, Iowa.

The Rural History Centre. A national center in England for the study of the history of farming, food, and the countryside.

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