AbstractsAnthropology

This oral history project explores the everyday experiences of farmers’ wives who live and work on family farms in western Illinois. Through oral history interviews, I examined how farmers’ wives narrated their life stories and what these stories tell us about women’s gendered lives in rural farming spaces. My inductive analysis is informed by ethnographic and oral history interviewing practices, fieldwork experiences, and resultant field notes. Analysis of the women’s stories reveals how the family farm is a site where the private and public spaces of life are entangled, and the experiences of social isolation, family hardships, housework, fieldwork, and child-rearing are gendered and excluded from consideration in the grand narrative of family farming in Midwest America. Advisors/Committee Members: Chawla, Devika (Advisor).