Overview
Since colonial times, agriculture has been deeply woven into the fabric of Pennsylvania’s history and culture. Pennsylvania Farming presents the first history of Pennsylvania agriculture in more sixty years, and offers a completely new perspective. Sally McMurry goes beyond a strictly economic approach and examines the factors of gender, labor, and environmental history to enlighten the role of women, children, tenants, migrants, and multi-varied cultures on the ever-evolving landscapes and distinctive regions of the commonwealth. In doing so, she reveals the extraordinary diversity of Pennsylvania's agriculture and its changing role over the years. Complimented by more than 150 photographs of barns, buildings, pastures, fields, and woodlots, McMurry offers a sweeping look at the evolution of Pennsylvania’s physical landscape over time.
Full Product Details
Author: Sally McMurry
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Imprint: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 9780822945154
ISBN 10: 0822945150
Pages: 496
Publication Date: 31 October 2017
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Available To Order
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Reviews
Historical, social, economic, and cultural forces intersected to shape Pennsylvania's agricultural landscapes. Pennsylvania Farming shows how common farm buildings and landscape features such as cisterns, contour strips, and tree lines can be 'read' to reveal a complex layered history that offers a historical perspective on modern-day issues such as sustainability, local foods, diversification, and small-scale agriculture. --Gabrielle M. Lanier, James Madison University An outstanding contribution to scholarship on Pennsylvania's historic agriculture. It merges lively writing with a careful analysis of documentary sources and field research on the state's buildings and landscapes. The book explores one of the nation's oldest and most complex ecological and cultural regions to arrive at sensible explanations about why things in the Keystone State look the way they do and how they got that way. --Ritchie Garrison, Director, Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, and Professor of History at the University of Delaware
Author Information
Sally McMurry is professor emerita of history at Pennsylvania State University, and former president of the Agricultural History Society. She is the author of a number of books on landscape and architectural history, including most recently, From Sugar Camps so Star Barns: Rural Life and Landscape in a Western Pennsylvania Community.
