HIS 499 - Gender, Sex, and Family in U.S. History - Spring 2024: Oral Histories

This project concerns the social and cultural history of coal communities in eastern Kentucky, with emphasis on Auxier and Van Lear. Family issues and gender roles are explored, as well as modernization, consumerism, religion, farm life, class distinctions, poverty, the Great Depression, company stores, birth control, divorce, company doctors, immigrants, home brew, homosexuality, blacks, the Ku Klux Klan, and the roles of women in the community.

This collection documents the experiences of women who have worked at the University of Kentucky. They describe many instances of a hostile work environment, sexist jokes, and demeaning attitudes of their male bosses and peers. Described in these interviews are the frustrations of these women, many of whom feel they have gone as far as they can go in their careers at the university and quite a few of which feel that their gender has played a large role in preventing them from moving up in their chosen field. Also included are several male interviews, who offer interesting takes on women's issues such as childcare and not conforming to traditional gender roles.

This is a series of interviews that give women often overlooked in the male-dominated equine industry an opportunity to tell their stories, including the barriers they face yet break, and the realities of what it means to be a female in the equine industry.

This is a series of interviews with female veterans enlisted during World War Two.

Women from a range of professions including childbirth educators, doulas, midwives, and mothers discuss their experiences assisting and/or giving birth. Topics discussed include childbirth education, childbirth delivery methods, post-partum experiences, homemaking, and motherhood.

Through a partnership between the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History and the University of Kentucky's Office of LGBTQ* Resources, this oral history project documents the individual lives of Southern LGBTQ+ individuals, and commemorates the ways those individuals have advanced LGBTQ+ communities both regionally and nationally.

This is a series of interviews conducted by students for the History 351 class on the topic of Kentucky women in the Civil Rights Era.

This project consists of interviews concerning women coal miners in Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia. Topics include coal mining, coal camps, unions, Great Depression, sexism, poverty, Native Americans in Appalachia, economic conditions, political activism, and environmental pollution.

This project focuses on the history of maternity care since the 1940s. Topics include the implementation of family centered nursing, expectant parent classes, and medical care for pregnant women. Also discussed in detail are hospital policy about labor and delivery, particularly concerning fathers being present at birth and the separation of newborns from their parents in the hospital.