UA Little Rock’s next Evenings with History lecture will discuss the unique experiences of women from rural Europe who immigrated en masse to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the lives that they built in urban America.

Dr. Marta Cieslak, professor of history at UA Little Rock, will present “From ‘the Inevitable Cabbage’ to ‘American Vegetables,’ or How Rural European Women Became Urban American Housewives” at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 5 at the Historic Arkansas Museum, 200 E 3rd St. in Little Rock. Refreshments will be served at 7 p.m.

“Between the 1870s and 1914, over eighteen million Europeans arrived in the United States. Most of them came from rural areas and settled in rapidly growing American cities where they faced multiple challenges of the urban life,” Cieslak said. “This talk examines the unique transatlantic experience of rural women migrants from East-Central Europe. It explores what kind of lives they left behind in their European villages and what kind of lives they built in their new and often unwelcoming American home.”

Cieslak is a native of Poland and is a specialist in European, world, and women’s history with a focus on transnational migration, nationalism, rural and urban poverty, and progressive reform movements. She is the recipient of the 2017 Swastek Prize, awarded yearly by the editorial board of Polish American Studies for the best article published in that year.

The Evenings with History series, sponsored by the University History Institute, features presentations by UA Little Rock faculty members sharing their current research. Admission to the series is by subscription to the University History Institute, although visitors to individual talks are welcome to attend for free. UA Little Rock students may attend free of charge.