Twin Falls, Fall 2026
Gather With Agricultural + Humanities Scholars, Students, and Community Members to Share Stories and Reflect
Description
Stories of Idaho’s Working Lands is a summit bringing together communities from agriculture and the humanities with goals to:
- Bring together scholars and students in the humanities and agriculture to explore the interconnected relationship between humans and the land.
- Encourage study and reflection on the central issues and challenges facing rural communities.
- Share the stories of how Idaho families are feeding the world through generations of diverse communities working the land.
- Bring Idahoans together across political divides as we recognize our contributions to feeding the world.
Keynote Speaker
Grace Olmstead, author of Uprooted: Recovering the Legacy of Places of the Places We’ve Left Behind
Grace Olmstead is a journalist who focuses on farming, localism, and family. Her writing has been published in The American Conservative, The Week, The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Review, The Wall Street Journal, and Christianity Today, among others. A native of rural Idaho, she now lives outside of Washington, DC, with her husband and three children.
Lead Scholars
Justin Vipperman, College of Southern Idaho
Justin Vipperman is an instructor of history at the College of Southern Idaho where he splits time between teaching and mentoring dual credit instructors across the state. He holds several degrees, including a bachelor’s in history from Idaho State University and a master’s in history and public history from Portland State University, Ore. Vipperman is a doctoral candidate studying political science and history at Idaho State University. A fifth generation Idahoan, Vipperman is an active member of his community, volunteering with several local and statewide civic organizations. He serves on the board of the Idaho Humanities Council, the Foundation for Idaho History, St. Luke’s Foundation Board, and Preservation Twin Falls. Vipperman and his wife Rebecca, the Mayor of Wendell, spend most of their time enjoying the outdoors with their three children.
Dr. Shelley McEuen Howard, College of Southern Idaho
Shelley McEuen Howard is a professor of English at College of Southern Idaho where she also serves as Chair of the Social Science and Communication Department. Her love of wild spaces began in Montana along the Big Hole River and has continued to Twin Falls where she currently resides. Shelley's interests include the intersection between community and the urban wild, and she believes strongly in the power of grassroots community involvement and the influence of stories in our lives.
Dr. Jared Talley, Boise State University
Jared Talley was born and raised in Southwestern Idaho, like many generations before him, and he is deeply connected to these desert communities. HIs research is place-based and focuses on community collaboration in the environmental governance of the American West. He is an environmental philosopher by training, but an interdisciplinary scholar by practice. He seeks to better understand how diverse communities relate to the land and how this relationship poses obstacles and opportunities for collaboration and governance. In doing so, he studies the role of science in collaborative policy, the role of place in environmental identity, and the role of the imagination in mediating both. Healthy land requires healthy communities (not only human) that dwell on it. Part of being a healthy community is being a resilient community — one that is able to withstand and adapt to the changing circumstances that are all too common in our contemporary era. Helping rural communities amplify their voice in collaborative spaces allows these communities the self-determination that is needed to adapt to a changing world. The relationships built and the sheer experience of collaborating builds the resilient capacity that is needed by these communities — collaboration, itself, is a resilient praxis. Specifically, he studies grazing management and public land permitting, community-led monitoring programs, place-based environmental governance, rural environmental collaboration, conservation justice, and the imaginative experience of our natural and built environments — all in the contexts of the intermountain American West.
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Registration information coming soon!
