A Decade of Farm Literature at USU: The Land Grant Institution

On September 15, 2025, ENGL 3630: The Farm in Literature and Culture, opened its student-curated exhibit to celebrate a decade of the course. The exhibit will be on display in the lower level of the Merrill Cazier Library through September 28.

The work to start the course was initiated over a decade ago by Professor Emeritus Evelyn Funda and Professor Emeritus Joyce Kinkead and was picked up by Senior Lecturer Rosa Thornley, Lecturer Bonnie Moore, and Senior Lecturer Deanna Allred, who teach online and in-person sections of the course. Students worked to curate the exhibit by selecting photographs from USU’s Special Collections and Archives that show what it means to them to study at Utah’s land-grant university.

Joyce and Evelyn attended the exhibit opening to reflect on the history of the course. Evelyn talked about the way students have been moving farther and farther away from the farm but that when they take this course, they are surprised that “they begin to see the farm everywhere.”

“While students were curating the exhibit, I asked them what they wanted their work to represent. Many were unaware that USU was Utah’s land-grant university, so they wanted fellow students to know what it means to study at a land-grant institution,” Rosa reflects. “A student-curated exhibit like this helps them to see that what they produce in a classroom gives them a voice for a larger audience.”

Department Head Brian McCuskey comments, “The Farm Literature course continues to develop and offer many kinds of educational experiences to USU students: research studies, online activities, interdisciplinary collaborations, and community-engaged projects. For more than a decade, the course has truly been a model of outreach and innovation.”