RHN 59/2025 | Event
Organisers: Agricultural History Society (AHS)
5 – 7 June 2025, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
AHS Annual Meeting
Ebbs and Flows. Water and Agriculture
Program
Thursday, June 5
8:15-8:30 Welcome
8:30-10:00 Opening Plenary: “The (R)evolution of Indigenous Foodways” by Sean Sherman
10:00-10:30 Coffee Break
10:30-12:00 Presidential Address: “Indian Landlords and Socialist Votes: Imperial Indigestion in Oklahoma” by Sarah T. Phillips
12:00-1:30 Lunch in Minnesota Court (included with conference registration)
1:30-3:00 Session I
- Remembering the Rural Experience
- Roundtable: Diplomacy and Food Security
- Troubling the Waters: Recovering Water’s Impact on the Productivity and Vernacular Knowledge of Black Watermen and Farmers
- A Thirst for Water in the High Desert: Management, Conservation, and Land Use in the Twentieth Century
- Water and Agriculture in Iowa
3:00-3:30 Coffee Break
3:30-5:00 Session II
- Intersections of Agriculture and Military Histories: From the American Civil War to the Two World Wars
- Roundtable: Rethinking Wheat Culture, Then and Now
- The Midwest and American Liberalism: A Discussion of The Liberal Heartland: A Political History of the Postwar American Midwest
- German-Speaking Farmers and the Americas, 1760-1980
5:30-7:30 Graduate Student Reception in the Lounge at Citizen (for graduate students)
Friday, June 6
7:30-8:30 Rural Women’s Studies Association Breakfast (for RWSA members and guests)
8:30-10:00 Session III
- Farming and Colonization in Settler Drylands
- Sketches, Snapshots, and Stitches: Artifacts with Hidden Histories of Agriculture and Rural Life in US History
- The Political Development of American Debt Relief
- Roundtable: Thinking at the Intersection of Religion and Agriculture in the Modern United States
- Agroenvironmental Knowledge on the Move
10:00-10:30 Coffee Break & Poster Presentations
10:30-12:00 Session IV
- Water Infrastructure Through Art and Artefacts
- Bovine Economies
- Food Assistance and the Farm Bill: Current Challenges in Historical Perspective
- Roundtable on Diana Alejandra Méndez Rojas' Modernización nacional, experticia transnacional. Itinerarios de los becarios en ciencias agrícolas de la Fundación Rockefeller en México
- Federal Policy and Natural Disasters
12:30-5:30 Optional Conference Tour (pre-registration required)
Saturday, June 7
8:30-10:00 Session V
- Measuring Weather
- Climate in the Great Plains
- Roundtable: James C. Scott’s Enduring Legacy for Agricultural Historians
- What Did They Eat? Culinary Influences on Environmental Thinking
10:00-10:30 Coffee Break
10:30-12:00 Session VI
- Lifecycles of Minnesota Farms
- Gender and Rural North America
- On the Other Side of the Mountain: Intermountain Water Transfers in Colorado
- Ancient Water Bodies, New Approaches: Managing and Modifying Water and Aquatic Life for Modern Chinese Agriculture
- Federal Policy and Planning
12:00-1:30 Lunch (on your own)
1:30-3:00 Session VII
- Rural Women and Culture
- Policy and Communities
- Roundtable: The Family Farm Movement’s Response to the Farm Crisis of the 1980’s
- New Perspectives on Agriculture in the US
- Agrarian Environments and Slavery
3:00-3:30 Coffee Break
3:30-5:00 Session VIII
- Hydraulic Engineering and Local Communities
- Animals and Rural Landscapes
- Climate Change and Agriculture in Southeast Asia
- Irrigation and Arid Modernities
5:30-6:30 AHS Business Meeting (open to everyone)
6:30-9:00 Awards Reception & Post-Conference Unwind
Further information and the full conference program can be found here.