Isabel Kelly

Kelly Therese Pollock  0:00  
This is Unsung History, the podcast where we discuss people and events in American history that haven't always received a lot of attention. I'm your host, Kelly Therese Pollock. I'll start each episode with a brief introduction to the topic, and then talk to someone who knows a lot more than I do. Be sure to subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app so you never miss an episode, and please tell your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, maybe even strangers to listen too. Isabel Truesdell Kelly was born in Santa Cruz, California in 1906. Isabel and her younger sister, Evelyn were both encouraged to attend college, and both opted for the University of California, Berkeley. Isabel graduated with her Bachelor's in anthropology in 1926, and then stayed on at Berkeley for graduate study. She earned her MA in 1927 with a thesis on Northwestern California Indian Art, and her PhD in 1932, with a dissertation on Fundamentals of Great Basin Culture, having researched the Northern Paiute and Coast Miwok Indigenous cultures of Northern California. At Berkeley, Isabel Kelly worked with some of the giants in the field at the time, including Alfred L. Kroeber and Carl O. Sauer, who nominated her to lead an archeological excavation at Sinaloa's Culiacan and Chametla sites in Mexico in 1935. It was Kelly's first research trip to Mexico, but she would end up falling in love with the country, and she moved there permanently a few years later. In the early 1940s, with funding from Berkeley, as well as from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Carnegie Institution of Washington, the American Philosophical Society, and the Institute of Andean Research in New York, Kelly conducted independent archeological research projects in central Mexico. By the mid 1940s though, she moved to Mexico City and secured a staff position at the recently opened Benjamin Franklin Library, a collaboration between the Office of the Coordinator of Inter American Affairs, the American Library Association, and the Department of Cultural Relations within the State Department. There, Kelly met librarian Bertha Harris, who would become her companion and housemate. Although the exact nature of their relationship is unknown, they were often treated as a couple, until Harris's unexpected death in 1949. In 1945, Isabel Kelly began working with George Foster as an ethnologist with the Smithsonian Institution's Institute of Social Anthropology, ISA, through which she taught at Escuela Nacional de Antropologia, ENA, and researched along with student assistants. As she was promoted to Team Leader, her responsibilities also grew to include things like budgeting, managing communications and schedules, and advising curriculum, along with various social outings with both Mexican anthropologists and US State Department officials. At one point in 1947 she wrote to George Foster, "I am becoming so damned diplomatic these days that I practically detest myself." In 1949, President Harry S. Truman announced the Point Four Program, which was designed to provide technical and scientific expertise to developing countries. Foster and Kelly worked to convince the State Department that the work of the ISA fit the goals of Point Four, arguing that while many of the other programs were designed with urban residents in mind, ISA was uniquely situated to help rural populations. Despite their efforts, though, by the early 1950s the Institute of Inter American Affairs, IIAA, absorbed the work of the ISA. As Eisenhower took office in 1953, though, US foreign relations shifted again with the move towards centralizing foreign aid programs into one organization, and a shift toward promoting Americanization. The Eisenhower administration created the Foreign Operations Administration, FOA, which took over IIA projects in Mexico. It was during this time that Kelly more frequently worked with her Mexican colleagues on projects of interest to Mexican officials to increase community participation in public health efforts. As she did this work, Kelly increasingly recognized that coming into a community with preconceived notions about how things should work was less useful than listening to the people on the ground and understanding their concerns. Her reports from the field reflected the shift in her approach. In 1955 the International Cooperation Administration, ICA, replaced the FOA as the arm of the US government administering non military assistance projects abroad. So Kelly once again found herself reporting up through a new chain of command. The ICA, inspired by a report that George Foster had published, organized a Community Development Division that sent scholars and consultants on visits to 10 regions where there were pre- existing programs, to take notes and report back. Kelly visited Puerto Rico for a few weeks, with the goal of seeing what initiatives might be recreated in Mexico. Because of budget challenges, Kelly didn't end up visiting any of the other places as part of this initiative. She was frankly relieved to return home to Mexico, where she was continuing to gain the respect of her Mexican colleagues. In 1956 for instance, anthropologist Manuel Gamio invited her to participate as a US representative in the Instituto Indihanista Inter-Americano, As in Mexico, the United States was also actively engaged in aid work in Bolivia in the 1940s and 1950s . In 1957, the ICA sent Kelly on an extended trip to Bolivia, where she offered advice on rural development and she trained educators. After her stay in Bolivia, the ICA next sent Kelly to Pakistan to report on the Village Agricultural, Industrial Development, VAID program. Although the language and culture in Pakistan were much different than what Kelly was used to in Central and South America, she was able to draw on her experience in Mexico to once again stress the importance of understanding the local culture. After all, as she explained in a lecture that she gave in Bolivia, "It is indispensable to understand that a culture is an integral whole whose elements are interrelated. There is not a single truly independent tract. And by changing one element, one is bound to change several. With one single cultural change, a whole chain reaction is started." After returning from Pakistan, Kelly resigned from the ICA, essentially retiring early, and focused on her own writing on topics ranging from the Southern Paiute to Mexican spiritualism, to the Totonic. She also lectured on the links between anthropology and public health, drawing on her own experiences in the field. Isabel Kelly died in 1983 at the age of 77 in Tepepa, Mexico. She never married, and after Bertha Harris's death, she never again had a house mate. She had no children. Kelly was survived by her sister, Evelyn Kelly Brown. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Stephanie Baker Opperman, Professor of History at Georgia College, and author of, "Cold War Anthropologist: Isabel Kelly, and Rural Development in Mexico." 

Kelly Therese Pollock  11:39  
Hi, Stephanie, thanks so much for joining me today.

Dr. Stephanie Baker Opperman  11:42  
I'm excited to be here.

Kelly Therese Pollock  11:44  
Yes. So I want to start by asking you how you came to be interested in this story and to write this book. 

Dr. Stephanie Baker Opperman  11:53  
So, I'm the kind of person that changes my mind a lot about what it is that I wanted to do. While I was an undergrad, I bounced around a whole lot from different majors. I mean, like, it's just kind of one of those things. I took a break before or between my bachelor's degree and my master's. I took another break between master's and PhD. I went into or getting my PhD with the thought that I wanted to go into politics or government work. I ended up writing about public health. So I'm kind of. One of my favorite things about history is how you can kind of pick, pick and choose and move around a lot. So I was writing a dissertation on public health campaigns in rural Mexico, and looking at how the Mexican state was trying to consolidate its power in the post revolutionary period, so 1920s, 30s, and into the 1940s and how they were working with rural communities. As I was doing that research, I came across this, you know, well, thoughtfully articulated ethnographic report of a community and of a community center with all of its, you know, kind of details in there about what was working in this community and what wasn't. It was written in English. It, you know, just really seemed like a thorough and well researched piece that was in, you know, kind of mixed in with all these other reports that were, you know, kind of done very quickly, or had a specific motivation behind it, of wanting this center to look good. And so I just kind of, it's like, who who wrote this? Who is this person? What is her story? What's going on here? And you know, when you're in the midst of dissertation work, it's not something you can just kind of put all your focus on right away, and so I had to pause and see, you know, if I could come back to her story later. So I finished the dissertation, but this individual just stuck with me. And the more I kind of researched who she was and learned about Isabel Kelly and her story in Mexico, the more I became really interested in, kind of wanting to figure out what her role was in the midst of all of these different kind of competing interests.

Kelly Therese Pollock  14:05  
Could you talk some about how you structured the book? And this is not a biography of Isabel Kelly. This is it, certainly, there are pieces of her biography and her story, but you're telling a larger story about the US State Department and Mexico and their relationship through the lens of her. So can you talk about sort of the sources you're using, how you decided to frame the story, and the way you're putting it together? 

Dr. Stephanie Baker Opperman  14:34  
Yeah, so, like I said, I originally went into my dissertation and into my graduate programs thinking that I wanted to work in politics or do some sort of government work. And I have an interest in institutional history, particularly related to US diplomatic relations. And I also think that a lot of times when institutional histories are written, they can be dry. They can be "and then and then and then" kind of stories. And so I wanted to somehow make this information relatable. And the more I thought about Isabel Kelly and the kind of changing nature of her role, I thought that that could be a good way to also talk about the things that are changing on a broader scale. So you know, kind of thinking about how US relations are changing in, during World War II and after, how Mexico is changing their approach towards industrialization, towards unification, towards having global alliances, how the field of anthropology is changing in the midst of all of this, because it's going through, you know, many ups and downs and swerves and twists in this period. And for me, she's kind of the connecting piece of all of that. And so I did a lot of research on, again, just kind of the institutional backgrounds of all of these different organizations as they ebb and flow and make their way to becoming the USAID in the United States. But then I also really immersed myself into Isabel Kelly's reports and most specifically her letters. I mean, she's a very prolific woman. She wrote so many letters that thankfully have been saved at both the Smithsonian National Anthropology Archive, and also at the Isabel Kelly Ethnographic Archive at SMU. And so I was able to see through that, you know, kind of her official thoughts and reports on specific projects, alongside more personal reflections on, you know, challenges of the job, on being a woman in these anthropological and diplomatic circles, of trying to make time for her own research interests, of living with another woman and then living alone. And so, you know, I felt like these all helped enrich and complicate the narrative in wonderful ways. And so one track we kind of see the complexity of US and Mexico's relationships changing, and similarly, you can kind of see her changes and evolutions and complexities as a human being.

Kelly Therese Pollock  17:10  
Let's take a step back and think about why the US is in Mexico and various other countries, but Mexico to focus on Isabel Kelly, at all at this stage. So this is we're mostly talking like after world a little bit during World War II, but then kind of post war at this point. What is the role of the US State Department in wanting to go to a place like Mexico? Why are they spending time and money and resources and people in Mexico at this time?

Dr. Stephanie Baker Opperman  17:45  
Yeah, so during and after World War II, US officials had very strategic goals of building development programs in other countries as a way to ensure their economic and political alignment. And so on the one hand, there would be government officials who would want specific war alliances. But then beyond that, and yeah, particularly as we get into the Cold War, offering things like, you know, suggestions on improvements to public health, water and sanitation programs, housing, building infrastructure and things like roads, community centers, all of these things are done with the idea of trying to assimilate a population. And that starts under President Roosevelt. It continues under Harry S. Truman, and then also under Eisenhower and into JFK. And so during this time, the US is, US officials are feeling very strongly that their technological know-how comes with a sense of maybe superiority, that we're the top of the line. We're the best that we can, you know, kind of offer the world, that we are aware the future of knowledge is being produced, and that we can disseminate this information fairly easily to large groups of people around the world. And then they can also become, ideally more democratic and more capitalist and closer aligned with us in both culture, economic, well, and I would argue, and in politics too. So they really have a very strong agenda. And then as that plays out, they find themselves continuing to rename themselves and kind of rebrand. They'll try the Point Four Program and then, well, that didn't, you know, that's not quite right. So let's make an adjustment here. And so there are just a series of institutional shifts and name changes that take places as they're trying to sort out how to how to do this, and as these initiatives butt up against the reality that you can't just, you know, blanket disperse knowledge and expect everyone to just kind of follow your lead without any input or resistance.

Kelly Therese Pollock  19:53  
And so the Mexican officials are accepting this, but it seems like they're accepting it is because they acknowledge that the only way to get the resources, the help that they do need, is to sort of at least pretend to accept the fiction that they're like, yeah, yeah. We'll, we'll take your Americanization and your capitalism and your your whatever is that, my sort of understanding the background there.

Dr. Stephanie Baker Opperman  20:21  
Exactly. Yeah. So there is this, you know, the Mexican revolution is from 1910 to 1920. In the 20 and 30 years after that, there is post revolutionary instability that's still being worked out during the time you know that I'm writing about, particularly in regards to cultural and political incorporation of rural areas that have largely been left kind of on the on the outskirts, but now need to be kind of brought into the federal and the more urban systems. So Mexican politicians definitely had their own agenda for unifying their political power, trying to help elevate the Mexican economy through rapid industrialization, and then establishing a healthy workforce that can actually implement these ideas that they have. But as you mentioned, they had limited resources on how to do this, and so they were very open to international development programs. They accepted US assistance because they were offering funds, because they were offering specialists who would come down and help to train, because they ultimately realized that it was really hard to be in the Western Hemisphere and not be a US ally at this point. And so, you know, this really is the best option for them. And as they started, Mexican officials started implementing these programs on their own and even doing it with US help, they started having to acknowledge that rural communities were having their own reactions to these programs. And so I think for Mexican officials, there comes a point where they realize that implementing these programs has to happen on a more case by case basis than they might have initially thought, that there is more resistance than they anticipated. And this is kind of what my dissertation was about. And so as a result, or at least, you know, kind of happening in conjunction with the development programs, you start to get the rise of anthropology in Mexico to sort of help figure out and ease some of these transitions.

Kelly Therese Pollock  22:13  
Yeah. And so I think the one of the most fascinating threads in your book is this evolution of Isabel Kelly's thoughts and her reaction and her realization along the way, that you can't just take your preconceived notions of how things should work, but you have to, instead, sort of become the student. You have to listen to the people on the ground and then tailor your programs to fit. So can you talk some about that, about kind of how she starts and then how she develops over time and is able to use that really successfully to work with the populations?

Dr. Stephanie Baker Opperman  22:56  
Yeah. So one of the things that I find most interesting about Isabel Kelly, and the most relatable is that she seemed like someone who's just always trying to figure out kind of what's next. And like, I, I'm right there with her. And so, you know, from being in one of the early classes of, you know, PhDs in anthropology, she got her PhD in 1932, Margaret Mead got her PhD in 1929, so like this is, you know, a similar time period. Then she finds herself as an anthropologist and archeologist in the southern US, or southwestern US, and in Mexico, she gets a job with the Smithsonian Institute for Social Anthropology. When World War II happens, that institute comes under the umbrella of the US Department of State, and so she's going to spend kind of the next 10 years, you know, she hadn't really moved, but now she's kind of working to keep her job in her field. She's working to stay in Mexico, which for her, is a rich source of research and teaching opportunities. She wants to pursue her own research, and she wants to train future generations of anthropologists, to try to secure anthropology as a professional field. So with all of this kind of as the background, she comes into Mexico and into her role as an anthropologist and as an instructor, really kind of buying into the, you know US technological superiority, the sense of superior knowledge production. And the other countries and cultures simply just needed to be aware of this wonderful insight and know all and then they too could catch up to the kind of US standards. And that changes over time, as you mentioned, right? Her definitions of culture and how to introduce new behaviors into a community really gets tested as she's on the ground. So she really starts to acknowledge the the work that's being done by individuals, the lack of research that had been done by both US officials and their Mexican counterparts, in trying to get to know these cultures. And, you know, I really think that, you know, she starts to, I think, through working with Mexicans and even being in competition with Mexican anthropologists, it forces her to rethink some of her strategies, like, why aren't we on the same page? Why aren't we working together on these things? Why are we in different corners? And she starts to notice that, you know, change really has to, has to come from the community that you're focusing on, that you can offer suggestions, but if they don't buy into it, or they're not interested in it, they're not going to adapt it. They're going to say what you want to hear, get you to leave, and move on. And that's not the long term goal that anybody has. And so she really starts to think about the necessity of working directly with community members, of having community based action, as you know, kind of the way towards improved behaviors. And, you know, I'm talking about things like sanitation or using, you know, having access to potable water. Like some of these things are infrastructural changes, and some of them are, you know, if you want this population to start speaking Spanish in order to feel like they're part of the Mexican community as a nation, you have to do more than just start having schools that teach Spanish. So she begins to include a lot of these ideas into her reports to State Department officials. She starts including them in her teaching, in her speeches, in her mentorship with graduate students. And what I love about Isabel Kelly is because she's so prolific, because she's writing so much, you can actually see her train of thought develop and kind of follow along with it. It's not a stark contrast between one report and the next report. You get to see it break apart in little pieces as she questions herself, as she starts to write something, and then later she completely rethinks that. And I think that it helped that other anthropologists like George Foster and Julian Steward were back in the US. They're starting to reach similar conclusions, and so they're helping to reinforce this messaging that she's giving to US policy makers. And when that starts to happen, when she starts to get kind of national or international attention for saying we have a lot to learn from Mexican communities, we have a lot to learn from Mexican anthropologists. She starts naming them in her report, so like Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran, like becomes someone that she regularly references, who was a very well respected and regarded individual in Mexico. Once that happens, her relationship with Mexican anthropologists also start to change. They start to invite her to more events. They start taking her work more seriously, because she demonstrates that she cares about what they're doing and she wants to interact with them, that she's there for intellectual exchange and reciprocity, rather than this kind of top down approach that she started with.

Speaker 1  28:00  
So let's talk about gender. You mentioned Margaret Mead. So of course, Isabel Kelly is not the only woman anthropologist. But of course, there are not as many as there are men. And she, you know, she regularly, as you point out in the book, she is mistaken as one of the wives in certain functions, instead of one of the scientists. And you know, she's kind of battled these things, but at the same time, she recognizes along the way that she has access to certain communities, to the ability to talk to women in communities in a way that the men do not. So she's able to use her gender. Could you talk some about that, the ways that she's thinking about gender along the way she starts to focus more on gender in her work, so how she thinks about gender, very specifically, especially later in her work?

Dr. Stephanie Baker Opperman  28:56  
Yeah, and I'll say that this is definitely a case where my teaching helped to influence my research, which was really nice because, you know, I was kind of coming at it from, well, I'm doing the history of anthropology and a history of, you know, kind of institutional knowledge or institutional development program. So like, I feel like that's, that's pretty good. But as I was kind of pulling together all my years of notes, and, you know, all my copies of the archival documents of things like her letters, and as I was teaching classes on women and gender studies, I started to see patterns of Kelly working with women as graduate students who were, you know, primarily the people that were sent into the field with her, as nurses on the ground in different areas, as diplomatic wives at the parties that she was going to, and then, yeah, kind of being mistaken in that category, as opposed to, you know, her professional role. And then also as like curanderas and healers and midwives in rural communities. And so at first it was, I mean, it just it gradually developed, in thinking about like, this is primarily who she's talking to. She's sending her letters to George Foster, she's reporting to the people that she needs to report to for her job. But when she's on the ground, she's really trying to get at something more. And so, you know, the recognition that she was able to work with female students to enter domestic spaces that her male counterparts couldn't get to, either for rules of propriety or, you know, kind of cultural customs the men wouldn't be invited into the kitchen, but she could go in there with her students and spend hours and learn all, you know, all this treasure trove of information that the men just didn't have access to, because they were interviewing the men who were working in the fields or in the factory, and that was giving them some analysis, but not really what's going on at home, or what really domestic life was like at all. And so as she's moving into these spaces and training future generations of Mexican female anthropologists, there's really a sense, I found, of trust, of frankness on both sides by the people being interviewed and by her and her team that allows for much more detailed and nuanced critiques of development programs by the audience that were intended to benefit from these programs. And so, you know, if you would send a male anthropologist in, he might interview a couple people, come back and report, well, the mayor says, everything's good. And the, you know, the three doctors that I interviewed all feel like they're doing the best they can, but the pregnant women just aren't showing up. And so we're not really sure what's going on. Whereas she could go in and say, okay, the mayor is not, you know, he's grafting money from, you know, the upper echelons. He only has this position because his wife, his brothers, with so and so and the doctors aren't able to get the the pregnant women to come in, because the pregnant women don't trust that he understands how women's bodies work. So they go to the midwives instead, and they're still getting all the care that they need. They're just doing it in a different way. And so she really helped to clarify a lot of, I think, misunderstandings or misapprehensions, that ultimately helped to improve the programs that were taking place in these areas.

Kelly Therese Pollock  31:30  
And so later in her career, then, Isabel Kelly is asked to go to Bolivia and then to Pakistan, which is a little bit stranger, because she doesn't even know the language there, by the State Department to help think about what can be done in those places. And it's shortly after she returns from Pakistan that that she decides that she's not on board with with everything that's happening. And essentially, she's not quite at retirement age, but but retires and goes back to sort of doing her own writing. Can you talk a little bit about that, her decision there, and what's going on with the larger picture of what is happening with the United States and their their role in the world?

Dr. Stephanie Baker Opperman  33:06  
Yeah, so, I mean, there's definitely part of of Isabel Kelly's decision that reflects how much she loves being in Mexico, how much research she wants to do there, and has had to keep, kind of putting on hold because her job is requiring her to visit other places. There's also a sense by, you know, kind of the end of the 1950s and into 1960 where she's traveling to Bolivia and Pakistan, where she's kind of repeating the same information over and over. It's like, "I feel like I've cracked the code on what it is that we're doing wrong, and I'm saying it to as many different audiences as you stick me in front of, but I'm not feeling so much like things are changing. I'm feeling like perhaps my role is to to make it look like we're doing something when really maybe the US Department of State has other motives." And so, as you know, other books, particularly David Price's book, "Cold War Anthropologists," which is kind of where I inserted Isabel Kelly as one of the individuals for this, as the Department of State grew increasingly reliant on anthropologists to provide essentially intel on rural communities, this is not something that she is interested in, and it's at this point that she realizes, "If I'm just going to keep beating the same drum or being asked to do even more travel, or being asked to provide information I'm not comfortable providing, this is so far removed from how I understand anthropology, and I've been fighting so long to make this field something that I believe in, and that is a professional institution I can get behind, that I need to back out of here." And so, yeah, she decides to to retire early, as soon as she comes back to Mexico. She is excited, and you know, she stays very active. She still keeps writing and publishing a lot, but it's all at that point, self directed research that doesn't have to have an institutional affiliation or State Department or kind of rubber stamping to make sure that she can stay in the country, that she's there and she's able to do what she wants. And I think both the the Mexican government and the US government are ultimately all right that that that's the path she decides to kind of end her career with.

Kelly Therese Pollock  35:21  
So you're working on another project with an NEH grant, where you're doing oral histories in Georgia with people who knew, I believe, Flannery O'Connor. Could you talk a little bit about that? That sounds like such a fascinating project.

Dr. Stephanie Baker Opperman  35:36  
Yeah. Thank you. So I am a Latin Americanist. That is my my passion. Studying Mexico and its vibrant history is where my heart lies. And within that, oral history has become something that I have learned about and been able to put into practice more recently and so wanting to engage my students in that, wanting to think about ways to have experiential learning and ways for them to engage actively with our community, has really kind of helped, helped me to rethink some of my current research plans. And so while I still am going to write about Mexico and will always find ways to do that type of research, I think, particularly in the post pandemic world, where trying to think about how often I can get to Mexico to do my research, it was really nice to be offered the opportunity to do something on local history, especially as someone who you know, made it very clear I will be learning as we go. I you know, Milledgeville, Georgia is not anything that I spent time on, but the project was looking for an oral historian, and so I stepped in as that role, and I have wonderful colleagues here who kind of helped me fill in the content knowledge on the history of Milledgeville and on Flannery O'Connor. So with all those caveats in place, let me say that this is an NEH project. It's a three year program. We're at the end of our second year, and the two goals of the project one are to find those stories in Milledgeville by folks who are still around, who either have some personal connection to Flannery O'Connor, who interacted with her in some way. Flannery O'Connor is going to turn 100, or would have turned 100, in March. And so those people were small children at the time they interacted with Flannery, or have heard family stories about her. And then secondly, as I was putting this project together, I noticed that there's a very large gap in Milledgeville's history, that it was the old capital of Georgia during the Civil War. It's also well known for being the home of Central State Hospital, which, at the time that it was founded, was the largest mental institution in the United States, maybe even in the world. And there's nothing else. And so looking at 1940s, 1950s, 1960s Milledgeville, there's just not a lot of recorded history, and yet, there are many elders in our community who have stories to share about this. And so trying to develop a picture of Flannery O'Connor and of what Milledgeville was like during the time that she was writing, became, you know, kind of the primary focus of the grant. And then, you know, I think a second part that's equally important is the way we went about collecting these stories. And so we're doing that by partnering undergraduate students with community members, and after they've kind of had some introduction to local history, some introduction to how to conduct an oral history, then they go and spend some time with the community member and record their story, and then bring that information back. And I think that's a wonderful experience for our students. I think it helps to build a community archive so that we can start to fill in these gaps of you know, the untold stories of this time period. And it helps, you know, kind of keep, keep all of us motivated and excited for for doing more local history. So I hope that it's just kind of a jumping off point of collecting these stories and creating this, this historical knowledge and having that recorded somewhere. But it's been really fun. And I'm teaching the class again in the spring, and so we'll do another round of interviews then. And yeah, it's, it's completely different from any other work that I've done before, and particularly because it's community focused and student focused, I'm having a great time with it.

Kelly Therese Pollock  39:36  
I love that. I think that is such a cool project. All right, so please tell our listeners how they can get a copy of your book on Isabel Kelly.

Dr. Stephanie Baker Opperman  39:49  
Thank you. So my press, the University of Arizona Press, is selling it directly through their website. You can also, after November 12, you can get it at at bookstores, or your favorite online bookshop probably would be the place to go for that. And I just, I'm so proud of this work. It's been so long in the making. And, yeah, I think the more people that know her story, the you know, even more questions will come up about, you know, kind of other figures who might have been doing similar things in other countries. And you know, I just one of the things I love about your podcast is, you know, the chance to really highlight all of these individuals that do incredible work but just didn't quite make it into earlier rounds of history books that are nevertheless very valuable in the stories they can share.

Kelly Therese Pollock  40:34  
Stephanie, thank you so much for joining me today.

Dr. Stephanie Baker Opperman  40:38  
It has been my pleasure. Thank you. 

Music  41:05  
Music.

Teddy  41:07  
Thanks for listening to Unsung History. Please subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app. You can find the sources used for this episode and a full episode transcript @UnsungHistorypodcast.com. To the best of our knowledge, all audio and images used by Unsung History are in the public domain or are used with permission. You can find us on Twitter or Instagram @Unsung__History or on Facebook @UnsungHistorypodcast. To contact us with questions, corrections, praise, or episode suggestions, please email kelly@unsunghistorypodcast.com. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate, review, and tell everyone you know. Bye!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai