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Volume 2
Summer 2007

Voices of American farm Women

Cynthia Vagnetti
Ph.D. Student in Rhetoric and Writing
College of Arts and Letters
Photo of Cynthia Vagnetti

For the past 15 years independent artist and scholar Cynthia Vagnetti has collaborated with community-based organizations to produce public humanities programs about farmers and ranchers advancing sustainable agriculture. Vagnetti has created primary source materials through documentary media in film, print, videotape, and audiotape; authored the ExhibitsUSA traveling exhibition Voices of American Farm Women; and co-authored People Sustaining the Land. Her 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 concentrates on farm women and families, health, labor, and immigration as a lens for facilitating public discourse on food, farming, and community issues. Vagnetti is the recipient of the MSU 2006-2007 Varg-Sullivan Award in Arts and Letters.

"This kind of agriculture is farming from your heart and your hands. It means you have to be really sensitive to the moods of the land and your animals. Alternative as individual as you are. John and I work well together. We're fortunate in that we came to a conclusion quite a few years ago that we didn't have men's work and women’s work…We just had a lot of work and it all needed to be done."
Cindy Dutcher
Goetzville, Michigan, 2003
Voices of American farm Women Story Image Voices of American farm Women Story Image