Alexandra Summa ’20

As corn became a dominant resource in U.S. industry, the crop was placed on display in festivals and museums across the country. In my thesis, titled “Corn Nationalism: Exhibiting Mythologies of America’s Crop, 1887-1918,” I study how corn exhibits reflect myths and metaphors of land and nation by interrogating Sioux City’s Corn Palace (1887), corn demonstrations at Chicago’s Columbian Exposition (1893), and exhibit “Food Values and Economies” at the American Museum of Natural History (1917). In these case studies, I show how businessmen, authors, architects, cooks, and curators use corn as a metaphor for national prosperity. I argue that white cultural creators of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries contextualized corn by applying visual and rhetorical strategies to replace and erase Indigenous peoples from histories of the resource. This was to advance myths about the origin of American civilization and fashion expedient meanings of the crop in the present day. By rejecting the novelty of King Corn and reading against the grain of his rule, we reveal a strange and understudied history that demonstrates the deep connections between the American West, museums, and colonial history, which further conveys the importance of continued decolonization and increased need for Indigenous cultural rights. 

In this process I was supported by my wonderful advisor, Reed Gochberg. I also met with other members of the Hist & Lit department who guided me as I curated this archive and defined “corn nationalism.” Additionally, I received a grant from the Harvard College Research Program that allowed me to travel to Iowa and research in the archives at the Sioux City Public Museum.