The books have been chosen, the interviews scheduled, and the syllabus finalized. A half hour from now, my class will embark on an investigation into Storm Lake history, and I’m betting—hoping—the students will be as amazed, challenged, and invigorated about the region’s past as I am.
Our books will include Art Cullen’s recent Storm Lake, of course, and additional studies will provide students with broader historical context. We will read Dr. Timothy Pachirat’s Every Twelve Seconds to understand the meatpacking industry and its relationship to agriculture and the environment, as well as how the industry distances the violence of production from consumers. Dr. Pachirat received his Ph.D. at Yale and worked undercover at a processing plant in the Midwest as part of his dissertation research. He will join our class via Zoom in March.
Students will also encounter Dr. Robert Withnow’s The Left Behind, on urban/rural divides and the politics of resentment, as well as an edited volume from Drs. Donald Stull, Michael Broadway, and David Griffith, Any Way You Cut It: Meat Processing and Small-Town America. Among the many contributions in the latter book is a chapter explaining—from an industry perspective—the small margins of error, and tight labor-profit constraints, that confront meatpacking management.
In addition to these works, we will also read some articles by Dr. Mark Grey, a professor anthropology at the University of Northern Iowa, who has written on immigration in Iowa (and specifically Storm Lake). He will join us for a conversation in February.
Beyond these readings and others, the majority of our class will be spent analyzing news from Storm Lake papers, and interviewing Storm Lakers via Zoom from afar. At present we have 15 interviewees set for group discussions, another 15 for individual conversations, and 15-30 additional folks for oral history interviews. More on these as they develop.
One of the most exciting components of the class relates to our partnering with four entities:
- With the Storm Lake Community School District, we will launch a new series of online profiles, entitled “Small Town, Big World,” highlighting current and recent SLCSD students and families.
- With Dr. Andrea Frantz’s “Digital Journalism” class at Buena Vista University, my students will collaborate to produce written profiles with an audio component similar to StoryCorps.
- With Anchor Films, a production company in Los Angeles, students will provide historical research to help form the historical narrative of a new documentary on Storm Lake in the works, “The Americans.”
- And for the Buena Vista County Historical Society, all of these materials will be donated at the end of the semester for future safekeeping.
We will be in touch on a weekly basis. Off to class!
