Kendra Smith-Howard discusses Grapes of Wrath

Kendra Smith-Howard, who moderates a discussion after our Friday 2/28 screening of The Grapes of Wrath, is Assistant Professor in the UAlbany Department of History. Her research focuses on environmental history in the twentieth-century United States, particularly in its intersection with histories of agriculture, consumer culture, technology and public health.

Her 2013 book, Pure and Modern Milk, calls attention to the ways in which new standards of purity and changing consumer practices reconfigured the work and material environment of the dairy farm in the twentieth century.

STARRED REVIEW in Publishers Weekly: “Smith-Howard succeeds as both historian and storyteller in developing an essential narrative about American industrialization and how both nature and technology have been romanticized. Her coherent and complex view of the 20th century is both informative and enjoyable.”

More about the film series:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/cfs.html#grapes

More about the book:  http://global.oup.com/academic/product/pure-and-modern-milk-9780199899128;jsessionid=C0F0A2675F9402DD7D8FBBE506F268A5?cc=us&lang=en&#