Julie A. Avery, Assistant Curator of History and Coordinator, Rural Arts & Culture Program, Michigan State University Museum.

Julie Avery’s work utilizes agricultural heritage to educate and inform the public about past and contemporary American agriculture and rural life issues. Avery has curated museum and traveling exhibitions, developed public programs, and produced a public television documentary and two books focusing on agriculture, and rural life and cultural issues. Dr. Avery is project coordinator and editor of this web-site resource destination.

Barbara Carlisle (1938-2007), Professor Emeriti, Theatre Arts and Women’s Studies, Virginia Tech.

A writer, producer, and director, Dr Carlisle worked for 40 years building connections between the arts, education and communities. She has many years experience teaching and training writers for stage and screen. Her long established work in community and regional theatre and her later work in video utilizes community voices speaking for themselves.

As a writer and director she has created pieces which bring a variety of voices and experience to the stage. Carlisle is nationally recognized for her leadership in education, theatre, and women’s studies. “What Will Be in the Fields Tomorrow?” was created and edited with original material by Barbara Carlisle.

More on Barbara’s work

Obituary

Cynthia Vagnetti, Independent scholar, artist and doctoral student in Rhetoric and Writing, Michigan State University.

For the past fifteen years Cynthia Vagnetti has collaborated with community-based organizations to produce public humanities programs about farmers and ranchers advancing sustainable agriculture. This has created primary source materials through documentary media in film, print, videotape and audiotape. She has authored the ExhibitsUSA traveling exhibition, Voices of American Farm Women and co-authored People Sustaining the Land. Cynthia's collection, Voices From the Field is the foundation for numerous educational documentaries, some of which have aired on public television.

Currently her scholarship and civic engagement concentrate on farm women and families, immigration, and citizenship as a lens for facilitating public discourse on food, farming and community issues. Vagnetti is the recipient of the MSU 2006-07 Varg-Sullivan Award in Arts and Letters.