Category: Scholarship

The Impulse to Preserve

~ Amy Lauters ~ Leave a comment

I was talking with a friend this morning about my research into American farm women’s history, research that became a dissertation that became a book.

As part of that work, I interviewed and corresponded with several hundred women who lived on or worked on farms between 1910 and 1960.

One of the findings that emerged didn’t actually make it into the final book, because it was interesting, but not part of the original research questions. And that is the impulse to preserve their own histories that permeated so much of the information shared with me.

Numerous memoirs, hand-typed, or self-published, came to my desk. Whole boxes of family journals and memoirs (which I have kept, unable to part with memories) came to me with the line, “I hope you can use this. We have no use for it but are glad someone might.” Some elderly women in care centers talked to me with tears in their eyes, voices soft as they related stories from their childhoods, and talked to me of “Mother.”

One of the connections I made in my talk this morning made me think about this work within the context of my Laura Ingalls Wilder research.

Wilder’s personal story, when told, often starts with the idea that as a “retired” farm woman, she decided to write out the memories of her childhood so that they wouldn’t be lost. While this is ostensibly true, it’s also a carefully crafted myth spun by her publishers and daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, to lend mystique and pathos to the elderly woman sharing her stories.

Wilder, in fact, wrote for publication for years before her “retirement,” and Lane acted as guide and mentor in many ways to her mother, shepherding her career. The work of her writing is disguised by the myth that developed around her.

However, the myth itself seemed to inspire something fascinating: the impulse to preserve the memories before they’re lost.

Numerous volumes of memoir rest in my office. Some I drew on as I wrote the first book. But upon reflection, I think there’s another work here, something that ties into the reflection of memory, nostalgia, and a search for a past that seemed somehow better.

And yet, too, many of the women I spoke to were clear about the hazards of being a woman on the farm, as well as the joys. Lack of adequate medical care, schooling, and public transportation topped that list, along with the sheer volume of work ascribed to women only.

I’m not clear on where this work will go, yet, and I’ll need to go and re-read my own works to find the right direction. But I want to encourage those who have written their own histories and families’ histories down. An historian is always looking for your work. Everyday history needs to be preserved, and it’s often challenging to find those original resources.

(And yes, that includes preserving letters.)

The Challenge of National Novel Writing Month

~ Amy Lauters ~ 3 Comments

National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, started Nov. 1. The challenge? To write 50,000 words of original fiction over the course of November.

I accepted the challenge, and although my writing time is limited to an hour chunk here or there, my goal is to write 50,000 words this month.

It seems like a lot, but I like to break down what I write. One of my University of Minnesota Professors, Ron Faber, explained to us, his students, that he broke down his dissertation writing process into five, manageable, pages a day.

When I wrote my first book, and my dissertation, I did the same.

Breaking down the work into manageable chunks daily, rather than viewing the entire thing as a monstrous task, makes the work go faster. My daily writing goal is 1,500 words, which is roughly five to six double-spaced pages.

If I complete 1,500 words a day on the same project throughout the month of November? Well, I’ll have completed that 50,000 word goal.

But do I have the projects?

Yes.

I’m cheating a little with the 50,000 word goal, as all of those words are supposed to be put to the same project. I actually have three projects I hope to complete this month, only one of which is the original fiction piece that may or may not ever see the light of day.

Of the other two, one is the preliminary work and secondary research for the community building and media project I plan to complete in England in the spring. The other is more exploratory essay on the impact of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her work on popular culture over time, something I hope to develop into an abstract for submission to the LauraPalooza conference next summer. That deadline for submission is Dec. 5, Rose Wilder Lane’s birthday.

So while I might not have 50,000 words on the same project completed by Dec. 1, I will certainly have 50,000 words written by then.

It’s good to have goals.

NaNoWriMo also has challenges in April and July, all designed to help writers develop their craft in supportive environments. I suggest, if you want to develop your work and you think an online writing group might help you, check out their website: NaNoWriMo.

(Psst — I’m already 10,000 words in on the fiction project. Woot!)

Lessons learned about politics, media, and women

~ Amy Lauters ~ Leave a comment

I spent the end of last week in Salt Lake City, Utah, for the annual convention of the American Journalism Historians Association. I’m a long-time member and past president, and it’s my favorite event each year.

This year, I presented a paper about press coverage of gender and gender violence, specifically during the years the Internet was emerging, 1990-2000. I started that research at the behest of a friend working on a book about social media and gender violence, and the recent usage of social media both for harassment and for political organization made examining the historical context even more important.

I didn’t know, when I started the work, just now relevant it would become in the week I presented it.

Social media, as with any media platform, is a tool. In and of itself, social media platforms are neutral. But the people using them? Those people can use them for whatever they want. In the 1990s, people were both concerned by the level of harassment possible online, and optimistic about the tool’s potential uses for change.

And in the last two weeks, we’ve seen examples of the best and the worst of those frames.

The best: Using social media to connect women, organize, and be voices for change. Alyssa Milano, Elizabeth Warren, and many other women stood up and tried to bring attention to ideological struggle represented by the GOP’s determination to appoint a man with a documented history of harassment toward women to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The worst: Using social media to bully, harass, and intimidate women who were trying to be voices for change. Memes attempting to diminish the work of these women abounded on numerous sites. Women’s struggles were portrayed as meaningless; our body autonomy was undercut; our very real problems with men who think our bodies are their playgrounds were mocked.

I at one point considered writing a post about the multiple times over the years where I faced sexual assault and harassment, but ultimately, I could not bring myself to relive any of it for public consumption. I will only say I didn’t report because I knew nothing would be done. I admire Dr. Ford for her willingness to come forward and face the ridicule, disbelief, and scorn I could not.

I will also say that any woman who attempts a career in a largely male-dominated field can expect a degree of harassment and assault as a norm. We learn to live with it or we get out. And frankly, we shouldn’t have to live with it.

According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice, one in four women between the ages of 18 and 24 suffer some form of sexual assault, and one in 20 men suffer the same. Why any of us who have suffered would mock the rest escapes me. But that is exactly what I saw on social media.

Conservative friends and family who jumped on that train and shared such mocking? You can unfriend me. I certainly blocked you.

My research about how media platforms are used by people to build and tear down community is ongoing. I won a research grant at AJHA to help continue my work, and I look forward to it.

And on the political front, I’m massively disappointed in the Republican Party. I’ve been an independent voter for years, but the last two weeks have been enough for me. I’m officially declaring myself a Democrat. I’ll be wearing blue on November 6.

On the Practice of Writing

~ Amy Lauters ~ Leave a comment

My main goal while on sabbatical this year is to reflect about and practice writing; it’s one of the reasons I started this blog to begin with.

Today, I thought I’d put together some of my thoughts on the practice of writing and those who have been influential in my own practice of writing.

The writers who’ve most influenced me in their practice are Nora Roberts and Louis L’Amour. They might seem like widely disparate authors, and in terms of content and story, they are.

However, when it comes to their practice, they approached writing similarly. I always enjoyed reading the bio of Louis L’Amour that appeared in the front of each of his books and the philosophy expressed therein. It spoke of his long and varied career in other professions, his belief in describing actual places as they were, and his firm approach to sitting down daily to write, regardless of distraction.

L’Amour was a self-taught writer, and his book, Education of Wandering Man, offered insight into his thought process that remains useful and relevant. Ryan Mizzen recently posted an article on The Writing Cooperative that highlights L’Amour’s best ten lessons on writing. Of them all, the notion that writers who want to write should just keep writing is the one that sticks:

“Start writing, no matter about what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on. You can sit and look at a page for a long time and nothing will happen. Start writing and it will.” –Louis L’Amour

Nora Roberts is probably best known for her romance fiction, but she also writes mystery under a different pseudonym. She is legendary in some circles for her prolific output. These days, she usually has two trade paperbacks, one hardcover stand-alone novel, and two additions to her “In Death” series, also in hard cover, every year.

I’ve written/edited three books, and I can tell you, the challenge of coming up with five books PER YEAR is stunning.

When asked, Roberts offers the same insight. Writers must write. She treats writing like a full-time a job (which it is, for her), and sits in her office writing during regular first shift hours. Her biggest pieces of advice for writers?

“Write what you like to read – if you are not captured by the story, who will be? Write every day – a habit that you need to build. And remember to have fun with it.” — Nora Roberts

Some might ask about my lifelong interest in Laura Ingalls Wilder and ask about her influence, but honestly, her story as woman and her observations and technique were more influential than her actual writing practice. Wilder’s story is one of persistence and practicality, and a model for the idea that retirement is a fallacy.

For practical writing, I’d cite her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, as an influence. Lane threw herself into writing as a means of supporting herself, her soon-to-be-ex-husband, and her parents in the 1910s. Her diaries record lists of books about writing, and they reflect her thoughtful interrogation of the materials as she pushed forward into a freelance market after World War I.

She struggled greatly with her mental health, but pushed forward to write constantly, in whatever genre or format was necessary for the people who paid her, and treated her work. I talk about this more in my contribution to Pioneer Perspectives. For Lane, writing was her job, her means of travel, and her necessary place of expression.

Engaging in this blog this year is in part a means of putting into practice the advice from these sage writers. I’m forcing myself to write daily, and writing here twice a week reflects that commitment. I’m also working on other projects, such as new research into British journalism history and more reflection on Laura Ingalls Wilder and her popularity over time.

None of it will get done unless I sit and write. Thanks for joining me on this journey.

The Music that is History and Culture

~ Amy Lauters ~ 1 Comment

The late David Noble, himself a distinguished historian, assigned a final paper to a seminar I took with him fifteen or so years ago that forced me to think about how I viewed history.

The essay that I turned in offered a metaphor of history as music, and with the cultural tensions that abound in today’s political climate, I decided to revisit that metaphor. Recognizing history and culture as “music” might help some to see that every story is required to create the whole.

The melody through line for history is the chronology: the dates, times and places events of major import occurred in history. For U.S. history, which is driven in part by rebellion of many with British roots, that timeline stretches back to at least 1215 and the signing of the Magna Carta by then-King John of England, who conceded certain rights to the nobility of his holdings with that document.

Those first concessions established precedent. Though it would be centuries before the British monarchy conceded absolute power, the concept that the monarch did not hold absolute authority resonated through the philosophical thought of many.

As school children, we are given dates to memorize, people to memorize, timelines to contextualize so that we can understand this very basic melody line, which is influenced by the victors in any given historical conflict.

And then, if we’re very lucky in our teachers and our curriculum, we start to get the harmonies.

Class harmony, through unveiling the stories of the impoverished, the working, middle, and upper classes over time. Gender harmony, through examining how men’s and women’s lives and stories differed over time. Race harmony, through examining how people interacted with others who looked different from them. Lifestyle harmonies, religious harmonies, urban and rural harmonies, and the multitude of stories of others all work together to share the rich symphony of history and culture. All are worth investigating. All are worth hearing.

In places throughout the melody, the drum beats of war and conflict overpower the harmonies of culture. The inability of people to recognize the varied harmonies—and those harmonies’ right to exist and contribute to the chord—creates conflict, clashing chords, clashing melodies that have to work together, eventually, to create a new chord, or to subsume a melody line.

I hear a lot of literal discord today; clashing notes from two through lines that can’t seem to find the place to harmonize. But I think it’s important find that chord that creates the harmony. Because when it can’t be found, one melody line may be lost.

Great Influences on Scholarship

~ Amy Lauters ~ Leave a comment

Last week, I discussed some of the most influential general fiction and creative nonfiction I’ve read. In response, I was asked about scholarship that made as significant impact on my work, and that list is significantly easier to narrow down.

This is NOT an exclusive list, but these were the first books that popped into mind as in some way pivotal to my thinking and scholarship.

William Holtz, The Ghost in the Little House.

Holtz’s work has been roundly criticized by Laura Ingalls Wilder scholars because of its central theme. His assertion is that Rose Wilder Lane truly wrote the Little House books. While I disagree with that claim, Holtz raised important issues in the book and opened up an entirely new discussion that needed to be held about the role Lane played in the construction of her works. It also unveiled Lane’s role behind the curtain and taunted scholars with the notion that Lane, herself, needed scrutiny. Since I’m one of those scholars, I consider this work hugely important for my scholarship. It helped give me direction.

Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound.

Full disclosure: I studied under May at the University of Minnesota. This book identifies the concerted cultural effort made in the 1950s to confine women to the home for their own “safety” in the face of the Soviet threat. A later follow-up work shored up some holes in the original narrative with regard to race and class, but it was truly an eye-opener for me.

Linda Gordon, The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction.

Gordon’s work is an historical case study about forty orphans who were brought by nuns from New York to Arizona to be placed with Catholic mining families. In New York, the children were undesirable because of their ethnic Irish and Eastern European roots; in Arizona, white mining families were incensed that “white” children were being placed with Mexican families. It artfully illustrates the idea that race itself is a social construction that is variable among populations, and not a fixed thing. It’s a brilliantly written book that I highly recommend.

Stuart Hall, “Encoding, Decoding.”

Ok, so this isn’t a book. It’s a white paper that became foundational to the construction of cultural studies theory. Some might say it’s a bit dated now, but it was frankly the best explanation for how people interpret the meaning of media content to that point, and an excellent starting point for further discussion. The key point of understanding here is that media producers do not have the tools to reach all aspects of their audiences, and that they fail to account for race and class, in particular. Hall’s three-point discussion about how audiences and producers work together to build a shared understanding of content remains a key part of my own theoretical arguments.