August 26, 2018 at 2:03 pm

Jellison Continues Active Research Agenda while Department Chair

Dr. Katherine Jellison

Dr. Katherine Jellison, Professor & Chair of History at Ohio University, maintains an active research agenda on top of her service commitments and teaching responsibilities.

Jellison has served as chair of the History Department since 2013. In 2017, the College of Arts & Sciences selected her for the Outstanding Faculty Leadership and Service Award, which recognizes “outstanding contributions in the areas of departmental, college, and university governance, institutional service, and community outreach that involves professional expertise.”

Jellison recently published “Get Your Farm in the Fight: Farm Masculinity in World War II” in Agricultural History 92 (Winter 2018).

Asked about its main argument, she responded,

During World War II, the United States needed to raise a sufficient military force while at the same time maintaining a sizable farm labor force to meet increased wartime production goals. At a time when the word farmer was emphatically gendered male, and many farming communities resisted employing inexperienced outside labor, the nation’s agricultural sector focused on keeping as many young men as possible on the farm.

The strategies the nation employed to secure both military personnel and agricultural producers played on a set of common themes regarding American masculinity. Visual images designed to persuade young men to stay on the farm echoed the iconography intended to recruit men into the military. Wartime propaganda portrayed both the ideal serviceman and the ideal farmer as white, muscular, and ready to use his powerful body to fight the war on the battlefield as well as in the farm field.

Jellison also continues to be active in reviewing books, presenting at conferences, and making her knowledge accessible beyond publications. Below is a listing of some of Jellison’s academic contributions since Jan. 1, 2018:

“’Working from the Outside In’: John Collier, Jr.’s Photographs of the Amish and the Navajo,” paper presented at the European/British Association for American Studies Conference, King’s College, London, UK, April 2018.
“Preparing the Celebrations and Ceremonies: Amish Women’s Religious and Family Rituals in the 1930s,” paper presented at the Rural Women’s Studies Association Conference, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, May 2018.
Review of First Ladies and American Women: In Politics and at Home, by Jill Abraham Hummer, published in H-Net Reviews (February 2018).
Discussant for the roundtable on “The ‘Granary of Freedom’: A Roundtable on World War II and Agricultural History,” held at the Agricultural History Society Conference, St. Petersburg, Florida, May 2018.
“American Feminism,” lecture given to the Women’s, Gender, Sexuality Studies Club, Athens High School, Athens, Ohio, March 2018.
Presenter on panel about “Harassment Culture in American Public Life,” organized at the Contemporary History Institute, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, January 2018.
Organizer of the 2018 Rural Women’s Studies Association Triennial Conference, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio.

Jellison’s long-term research in U.S. women’s history (including First Ladies) has also made her a go-to resource for national and international media. During the summer of 2018, Jellison was featured in at least five major media stories on First Lady Melania Trump: