History Day

Items

• "I am the farm worker going home at evening": gender fluidity, rural landscapes, and the Women's Land Army
  A common fictional narrative shows people with nonconforming identities finding self-acceptance in towns and cities. For LGBTQ+ History Month, library graduate trainee Lottie Wood explores how author E. M. Barraud found the opposite, through rural work and the Women’s Land Army.
• Absolute Units: 'Origin Story (with Adam Kozary)' [the story of the 'absolute unit' meme]
  In April 2018, we shared a photo of a very large sheep on Twitter with the caption 'look at this absolute unit'. Before we knew it, this sheep had changed our museum's fortunes forever. For our first-ever episode of Absolute Units, we're joined by – former MERL social media manager from 2012 to 2019 and father of the Absolute Unit post–to revisit the story behind our most viral moment. What did it take for a museum to go viral on the Internet? What was its role in our history? And what did it mean for our future? Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Themetune by Tai Dawson. Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan Producer: Joe Vaughan
• Absolute Units: 'Queer Rural Lives: Searching the Archives' with Tim Jerrome
  Queer histories of England have predominantly focused on the country's urban centres and cities - especially London. Yet queer and same-sex relationships have always existed throughout English life. Rural England is no exception. In the first of two podcasts, Joe and Ollie welcome onto Absolute Units former MERL colleague Tim Jerrome (University of Brighton), whose PhD explores the history of same-sex relationships in rural England. Learn about the challenges of finding queer histories in farm archives, the issues of archivist objectivity, and how museums can develop their practices to better surface and represent stories and relationships that were hidden in the past. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Themetune by Tai Dawson. Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan Producer: Joe Vaughan
• Bees in the Collections
  The University of Reading houses one of the largest collections of bee-related material in the United Kingdom. The works contained within provide vital insights into historic social and political perceptions of the world’s most important pollinators. This online exhibition showcases some of the most significant apian-related works, held by the University and beyond, from the sixteenth to the twentieth century which demonstrate how social and cultural perceptions of bees and hives changed as British society evolved. The online exhibition curated by Olivia Blackburn, as part of a student project, ‘Bees in the Collections’, which was supervised by Professor Helen Parish and Dr Rohan Deb Roy from the Department of History, University of Reading.
• George Lansbury Archives
  Personal papers and correspondence covering many political and social issues of the early 20th century.
• Queer Constellations: The Histories of Rural Gay Men
  Criminal archives are the most common source of gay histories, as male homosexuality was illegal until 1967. Through searching assize records on Ancestry, and investigating court reports via the British Newspaper Archive, we identified rural occupations for some of the men placed on trial. By comparing these occupations to objects in our collection, we aim to show that these men were more than just a conviction. They were ordinary people living ordinary lives. An online exhibition inspired by the 2021 physical exhibition, 'Queer Constellations: Artistic Trespass and Rural Gay Histories'. 'Queer Constellations' posed the question as to whether there is queerness in rural life. It brought together artists from around the UK and Ireland, including Epha J Roe, James Aldridge, Emma Plover, Gemma Dagger, Eimear Walshe, Claye Bowler and Daniel Baker, to delight in the strangeness of rural life and to feel its enough-ness. The MERL invited users to trespass the space, explore the margins, and to join us in queering the countryside.
• The Groundnut Scheme: a colonial failure
  The ill-fated Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme was planned and put into practice in the mid-twentieth century, coming to an abrupt end in 1951. The story of its collapse is a powerful example of why top-down, colonial approaches to agricultural development often struggled to produce the desired results. It raises important questions about why the voices of local agricultural workers and communities were often ignored, and how this contributed to the Scheme’s demise. This online exhibition has been devised to make sense of scattered holdings throughout The MERL collection. Together these groundnut and East Africa-related farming resources can help shed light on this infamous project and its failings. This exhibition was compiled in partnership with undergraduate History students from the University of Reading, including Charles Clemens, Rebekah Fry, Katie Crook, Jakob Longden, and others. We are also grateful for the support of Atenchong Talleh Nkobou from the School of Agriculture, Policy, and Development who provided support and expertise, and to Tim Jerrome and Dr Ollie Douglas for editorial and technical input. You can watch the 1948 film, 'The Groundnut Scheme at Kongwa' via the University of Reading's Virtual Reading Room.