For many years I have studied the history of rural southern Illinois and of rural United States, and of governmental policies the deal with agriculture and with rural life. Much of my work deals with rural women, rural class relations, and social movements. I have written two books and numerous articles based in this work, and an edited volume, Fighting for the Farm: Rural America Transformed.
I am part of a multi-disciplinary team researching watershed planning in the Cache River, Illinois, watershed.
With my husband, photographer D. Gorton, I recently completed a web site that deals with this region: A Twenty-First Century Landscape: The Rural Lands of Central and Southern Illinois.
We have completed a second project, The Lands of the Cache: The Vanishing Human Hand on the Landscape.
In 2000 D. Gorton and I began a long-term project on peoples' memories of, and judgments about, the southern Civil Rights Movement. With my husband, I have returned to Mississippi, where we participated in the Freedom Movement in the 1960s. We are using digital video to interview and film in the field. We will author the material on the World Wide Web as well as in conventional print and video media.
I also have a long-term interest in Latin America. During my master's program I conducted field and archival research in Amazonian Ecuador. I have collaborated with the founding director of the Central Master's Degree Program in Central America, Dra. Margarita Bolanos, at the University of Costa Rica, San Jose.