Hearth and Home: Reconstructing the Rural Kitchen, c1840–1940’

 How do we capture the flurry of activity, the frenetic movement of people and goods, the routines and ruptures that shape individuals’ everyday experiences and the spaces in which they live? How do we write a history of domestic space, and what are the benefits of such an endeavour for the social or cultural historian? In this talk, Dr Katie Cooper will address these questions offering a peek through the window of New Zealand’s rural kitchens.

Dr Cooper is curator of colonial histories at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Her doctoral research, completed in 2016, examined the history of rural New Zealand to 1940, focusing on rural food ways and the kitchen as a functional and social space in rural homes.

Recorded at the National Library of New Zealand, 1 July 2017.