Overview
Drawing from the archives of North Carolina garden writer Elizabeth Lawrence (1904–1985), southern state market bulletins, and letters from bulletin readers, Elizabeth Engelhardt introduces the complex archival methods, systems of knowing, and practices of naming found in the networks of correspondence among gardeners and farm women. She considers how these publications and letters provide background to contemporary movements to preserve and value local foods, heritage seeds, and farmers’ markets, as well as insights into twentieth century gender and class relationships.
Presentation
Part 2: Engelhardt’s discussion of state market bulletins’ history, content, readership, circulation, and archival importance
Part 3: Engelhardt overviews the correspondence among bulletin readers and Lawrence
Part 4: Engelhardt asks questions such as, “What do farm bulletins and letters reveal about race, class, and gender history?”
Part 5: Engelhardt relates the influence of market bulletins in Eudora Welty’s “The Wanderers.”
Part 6: Engelhardt Q & A. Topics include how Lawrence’s correspondence inform her writing
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Northwestern State University of Louisiana's Watson Memorial Library Cammie G. Henry Research Center for the materials from the Warren Way Collection, which were the inspiration for this talk and appear in facsimile in the video. Also thanks to the University Libraries at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for digitizing the 1920s market bulletins from Raleigh, North Carolina, which appear in the video. This presentation, given at Woodruff Library at Emory University, April 24, 2012, was sponsored by Emory's American Studies Program and the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library with support from the Hightower Fund.
About the Author
Elizabeth Engelhardt, professor of American Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Texas, Austin, writes about food, gender, race, and class in the US South. She is lead author of Republic of Barbecue: Stories Beyond the Brisket (2009) and author of A Mess of Greens: Southern Gender and Southern Food (2011). Engelhardt is co-editing (with John T. Edge and Ted Ownby) a forthcoming volume about southern food methodologies.
Recommended Resources
Brown, Whitney E. "Eat It to Save It." Southern Cultures 15, no. 4 (Winter 2009): 93–102.
Engelhardt, Elizabeth. A Mess of Greens: Southern Gender and Southern Food. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011.
———. Republic of Barbecue: Stories Beyond the Brisket. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009.
Lawrence, Elizabeth. Allen Lacy, ed. Gardening for Love: The Market Bulletins. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1988.
Rudy, Kathy. "Locavores, Feminism, and the Question of Meat." Journal Of American Culture 35, no. 1 (March 2012): 26–36.
Wilson, Emily Herring. No One Gardens Alone: a Life of Elizabeth Lawrence. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004.
———, ed. Two Gardeners: Katharine S. White and Elizabeth Lawrence: A Friendship in Letters. Boston: Beacon Press, 2002.
Links
Farmers and Consumers Market Bulletin, Georgia
http://agr.georgia.gov/market-bulletin.aspx.
Mississippi Market Bulletin
http://www.mdac.state.ms.us/publications_and_forms/market_bulletin/.
Survey and Research Report On The Elizabeth Lawrence House and Garden
http://www.cmhpf.org/S&Rs%20Alphabetical%20Order/ surveys&rlawrencegarden.htm.
The Wing Haven Foundation (Owner of the Elizabeth Lawrence House and Garden)
http://www.winghavengardens.com/.