Cindy OttPumpkin
The Curious History of an American Icon
Cindy Ott is an associate professor of American Studies at Saint Louis University and the author of Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon (University of Washington Press, 2012). In addition to publishing articles in the fields of environmental history, food studies, visual and material culture, and history and memory, Cindy has organized exhibitions at the Smithsonian Institution and the Museum of the Rockies, community development projects at Saint Louis University, and historic preservation projects the National Park Service. Cindy is the graphics and Gallery essay co-editor of Environmental History and a regular grant reviewer for the National Endowment for the Humanities, from which she was awarded a grant in 2006. She was a fellow at Harvard University's Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History during the academic year 2013-2014 and a visiting researcher at Stanford University's Bill Lane Center of the American West in 2012. She is currently writing a book with the working title, "Biscuits and Buffalo: Squashing Myths about Food in Indian Country" about the history of food consumption and production on reservations in the American northern Plains. She is also working on an article about the Miss Indian America pageant, which took place in Sheridan, Wyoming from 1952 to 1983.
Foreword Not by Bread Alone / William Cronon
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Corn, Beans, and Just Another Squash 10,000 B.C.E. to 1600
2. "The Times Wherein Old Pompion Was a Saint" From Pumpkin Beer to
Pumpkin Pie, 1600 to 1799
3. Thoreau Sits on a Pumpkin The Making of a Rural New England Icon, 1800
to 1860
4. "Wonderfully Grand and Colossal" The Pumpkin and the Nation, 1861 to
1899
5. Jack-o'-Lantern Smiles Americans Celebrate the Fall Harvest with
Pumpkins, 1900 to 1945
6. Atlantic Giants to Jack-Be-Littles The Changing Nature of Pumpkins,
1946 to the Present
7. Pulling Up a Pig Sty to Put in a Pumpkin Patch The Changing Nature of
American Rural Economies, 1946 to the Present
Notes
Bibliography
Index
