12-P – Iowa in the Great Depression
At a Glance
Time
Two weeks:
Thursday, Sept. 10 – Sept. 17, 2026
2 – 3:30 p.m. CT
Cost
$40.00
Location
Community Room, Green Hills
2205 Greens Hills Dr, Ames
Class limit: 60
Course Description
What was it like to live in 1930s Iowa? In this class we will be exploring how Iowans of all types managed the hardest of hard times. The class will examine the experience of farming families, those in urban areas, as well as distinctive groups such as the Meskwaki. The discussion will be enriched by the photographic record of those years, which provides abundant examples of how Iowans lived during those years.
Instructor
Pamela Riney-Kehrberg is Distinguished Professor of History at Iowa State University, where she has taught since 2000. She is the author of Rooted in Dust: Surviving Drought and Depression in Southwestern Kansas, Childhood on the Farm: Work, Play and Coming of Age in the Midwest, The Nature of Childhood: An Environmental History of Growing Up in America Since 1865, and When A Dream Dies: Iowa, Agriculture, and the Farm Crisis of the 1980s. She is also the editor of the Routledge History of Rural America. In 2017, she became a Fellow of the Agricultural History Society.