What's For Dinner?

Eileen Schell is the co-author of Rural Literacies - Studies in Writing and Rhetoric (2007) and Reclaiming the Rural: Essays on Literacy, Rhetoric, and Pedagogy (2011). Eileen teaches writing and rhetoric at Syracuse University. She and her co-authors grew up on farms --- Eileen on a Washington State apple farm – and have stakes in examining portrayals which further corporate or political agendas. She explains how they distort the complex circumstances faced by American farmers and draw attention away from agricultural policies that caused families to lose their farms. We discuss several “narratives” about farmers, including Jefferson’s idea of farmers as chosen people of God and 20thh century accounts of the “tragedy” of farm losses and farmers as victims.