{"id":7274,"date":"2017-04-19T05:00:30","date_gmt":"2017-04-19T05:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs-dev.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/?p=7274"},"modified":"2017-03-29T12:18:32","modified_gmt":"2017-03-29T12:18:32","slug":"the-land-grant-college-at-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs-dev.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/2017\/04\/19\/the-land-grant-college-at-war\/","title":{"rendered":"The Land-Grant College at War"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0The following guest blog post is by Allison Horrocks, Ph.D. ’16. Dr. Horrocks received her B.A. in History and American Studies from Trinity College and her M.A. in History from the University of Connecticut. Her research explores the history of Home Economics in higher education in the twentieth century.<\/em><\/p>\n

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One hundred years ago, students at the Connecticut Agricultural College were trudging through campus to attend spring classes and\u00a0to take part in one or many extracurricular activities, most of which would still be familiar today. While some co-eds might seek out\u00a0or even play basketball,\u00a0others could pass the time by writing for the school paper, acting in a drama club, or\u00a0attending social meetings at a fraternity.<\/p>\n

But the spring of 1917 was also charged with a feeling of anticipation. These same students were\u00a0gearing up for war.<\/p>\n

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30 April 1917 Connecticut Campus<\/p><\/div>\n

Between March and April of 1917, students and faculty members at Connecticut Agricultural College, hereafter cited as CAC, saw their futures change dramatically within a matter of weeks. On April 6, 1917, the United States formally entered the global conflict known as the Great War. How the people of Connecticut, and those at CAC in particular, mobilized to \u201cdo their part\u201d in order to win the war is the subject of a new retrospective exhibition hosted in the galleries of the Dodd Center.<\/p>\n

When considering how the people of Connecticut contributed to the\u00a0war, service in the armed forces is usually what comes to mind. A small, but proportionally significant number of male students from CAC (and other in-state institutions, of course) would be\u00a0called up for military service. But this was not the only way that Nutmeggers or CAC students demonstrated their loyalty. This focus on student life at CAC between 1917 and 1918 shows a much wider concept of service to the war effort, work that did not marshal guns as its weapon of choice.<\/p>\n

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Grove Cottage<\/p><\/div>\n

Though war had loomed for years, the US\u2019s official entry changed campus life rather dramatically. By\u00a0April 30, the student paper,\u00a0The Connecticut Campus and Lookout\u00a0<\/em>was filled with news of student departures and other adjustments to be wrought on campus. In addition to those who would be called overseas, there was a buildup of forces to do work on the agricultural front in the fields and farmlands of\u00a0Connecticut. Each age group, indeed every <\/em>citizen, male and female, was thought to have a special role in serving the\u00a0warring nation. Throughout the state, youth grew corn and managed crops for the Junior Food Army and adult women joined up with a farming program known as the Women’s Land Army. Meanwhile, faculty at CAC taught thousands how to conserve food\u00a0and agents traveled to provide demonstrations on food conservation. The central thread with all of this work was the notion that\u00a0food\u00a0<\/em>and crop management were vital to winning the war. For contemporaries, the notion of a \u201chomefront\u201d was expansive, including domestic spaces as well as on-campus laboratories, farms, and civic halls where families learned proper food saving methods.<\/p>\n

In addition to shedding new light on the war effort in Connecticut, the objects curated for this exhibition offer a wide view of what life on campus was like a century ago. Alongside propaganda posters from the period, photographs of dormitory rooms, dance cards, and other student belongings will be put on display. Other objects from throughout the state, including\u00a0letters from “the front” in France and images of youth activities with the Food Army will also be\u00a0on view.<\/p>\n

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Memorial Oak<\/p><\/div>\n

In all, this exhibition draws from a range of archival materials from the\u00a0Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J.\u00a0Dodd\u00a0Research\u00a0Center,\u00a0University of Connecticut\u00a0Libraries.\u00a0In addition to objects from the\u00a0University of Connecticut Memorabilia Collection, photographs and other artifacts from the Connecticut Soldiers Collection and\u00a0Augustus Jackson\u00a0Brundage\u00a0Papers (among others) will also be on display.<\/p>\n

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The Land-Grant College at War<\/strong> is one of several World War I themed exhibitions on display in Babbidge Library and the Dodd Research Center this Spring, marking the centennial of the official involvement of the United States in World War I. The United States Congress declared war on the German Empire on 6 April 1917.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0The following guest blog post is by Allison Horrocks, Ph.D. ’16. Dr. Horrocks received her B.A. in History and American Studies from Trinity College and her M.A. in History from the University of Connecticut. Her research explores the history of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10],"tags":[223,412],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-dev.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7274"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-dev.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-dev.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-dev.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-dev.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7274"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-dev.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7335,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-dev.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7274\/revisions\/7335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-dev.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-dev.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-dev.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}