2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

As Western societies urbanized in the twentieth century, they embraced specific images of rural women and men to serve specific political and cultural needs.  Far from accurately depicting rural life, portrayals of rural characters in popular culture relied on gendered stereotypes and simplified tropes through which largely urban audiences grappled with rapid social changes.  Anxiety surrounding modernity – including the perceived breakdown of the “traditional” family and of patriarchal authority – was expressed through media as diverse as film, television, advertisements, posters, stories, Country/Western music, fine art, and museum exhibits.  Even the design of public monuments and museum exhibits could be informed as much by popular culture as by historical reality.  In this lightening round, we explore a variety of ways in which dominant cultures in the United States and Europe used rural tropes to grapple with their own changing notions of masculinity and femininity, and suggest ways in which historically accurate gendered perspectives can be better integrated into popular understanding of rural life.