Lecture: Iowans Confront the Farm Crisis of the 1980s

Pamela Riney-Kehrberg is distinguished professor of history at Iowa State University, and a fellow of the Agricultural History Society. She has taught at Iowa State since 2000. She is the author or editor of seven books, including Rooted in Dust: Surviving Drought and Depression in Southwestern Kansas and Childhood on the Farm: Work, Play and Coming of Age in the Midwest. Her new book is When a Dream Dies: Agriculture, Iowa, and the Farm Crisis of the 1980s. Dr. Riney-Kehrberg’s lecture will explore the trauma the people of Iowa faced in the 1980s when two-thirds of its farmers were in distress, and half of those were in imminent danger of foreclosure.

Your Historians Series is presented in partnership by the ISU Department of History and Ames History Museum.