CCWH Prelinger Award Winner

GREY OSTERUD (2009)

The Coordinating Council for Women in History is pleased to announce that Grey has been awarded the twelve annual CCWH-Prelinger Scholarship Award of $20,000. Dr. Osterudis is an indepenent scholar and will use the Prelinger Award to complete her book, Putting the Barn Before the House: The Lives of Rural Women in Twentieth Century New York.

Grey Osterud, 2009 Prelinger Prize winner, is an independent scholar. The title of her first book is The Lives of Farm Women in Nineteenth-Century New York was published by Cornell University Press in 1991. As a graduate student in the interdisciplinary in American Civilization at Brown, where she received her Ph.D. in 1984, Osterud went to the U.K. on a Fulbright to study working-class women during the process of capitalist industrialization in Leicester, England. At that time she participated in the founding of Gender and History.

Her current work explores twentieth century rural women's perspectives on the prevalent notion that women in farm families were to subordinate their individial inclinations to "the good of the farm." Most of these rural  women in 20th century New York saw investing capital and labor in productive operations rather than spending money on sonsumer goods or devoting time to leisure activitiesor mere housework- as a necessary and rational course for families who are determined to make a living on the land and, if possible, to pass on viable farms to their children.

She worked in public history while teaching in Oregon and California. When Gender and History needed a American co-editor, Osterud resigned from her tenured position and worked half-time for the journal. After her term as co-editor expired,  she became a freelance developmental editor working with authors on books in American women’s and gender history, African American history and social history.

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The Coordinating Council for Women in History, an organization for women in the historical profession, is committee to exploring the diverse experiences and histories of all women. Its primary goals are to educate men and women on the status of women in the historical profession and to promote research and interpretation in the areas of women’s history.

Information about the Prelinger Prize and other CCWH awards is available here.

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