OUt in the field
My ethnographic dissertation explores queerness in Midwestern agriculture by examining how lesbian, bisexual women, transgender people, and queer women (LBTQ) build community in, through, and beyond farming. I argue that farming as a queer person equates to navigating heteropatriarchal oppression while exerting queer resistance. Queer farmers challenge dominant agricultural models and proliferate alternative possibilities for the future of agriculture in the United States. Part of the dissertation appears in Society & Natural Resource’s special issue on Gender and Sexuality in Agriculture that I guest edited with Isaac Leslie and Michael Bell. I presented a chapter at the American Sociological Association’s 2020 Annual Meeting.
Australian LGBT+ Farmers
in 2018, I spent six months in Australia interviewing LGBTQ farmers about their experiences with agricultural and queer communities. Read about the farmers in this Invisible Farmer Project blog.
LGBTQIA+ Farmer Survey
Data from farmer surveys helps understand farmers’ experience and craft policy to support them. However, many surveys lack questions on sexual orientation and/or gender identity beyond binary sex categories. With the input of a farmer advisory board, I have adapted and tailored the National Young Farmers Coalition’s 2017 survey to collect data specifically on LGBTQIA+ aspiring, current, and former farmers.