Project lead: Prof. Susan Ferguson (Professor of Sociology & Director of the CTLA)
Vivero Fellow (Fall 2025): Morgan Smith
Vivero Fellow (2024-2025): Emma Kumano-Maloney
Link: https://laetitiamoonconard.sites.grinnell.edu/
I am working on a project that is exploring the life and work of a Grinnell College faculty member for the early 20th century. Laetitia Moon Conard came to Grinnell as a faculty spouse, and her husband, Henry S. Conard gets all the accolades and attention. In research I begun over 20 years ago, I discovered that Professor Conard was one of the first women to teach in the Sociology Department at Grinnell, but she had an amazing life both inside and outside of the academy, including her work with poor families in town, her fight for women’s suffrage, and her work on the national and international peace movements. If that was not enough, she also ran for governor of Iowa on the Socialist Party ticket.
My research students and I delved deeper this summer into the archives and contacting living family members to obtain more information about Laetitia. The results are rich. I would now like to work with a Vivero Fellow to design a website on Laetitia’s life and work. I envision timelines, photo histories, the history of the sociology department, her research, as well as content from some of my students’ work this past summer. The Vivero Fellow might also put together a video about her life and work, as the project works to make its current research more public and accessible.
