Representing Rural Women | by Margaret Thomas-Evans | Whitney Womack Smith | Agatha Beins | ‎ Lexington Books | ‎ English

Product description Review This collection addresses how rural women, long overlooked by literary scholars, have been represented by others and themselves in various mediums from literature to social media. Anyone interested in rural women, past and present, the spaces they inhabit and symbolic imaginaries, will find it fascinating as it challenges preconceived notions about women and rurality. -- Catharine A. Wilson, Redelmeier Professor in Rural History, University of Guelph and Co-Chair of the Rural Women’s Studies AssociationI found this work engrossing, fascinating, and insightful. Encompassing themes of race, class, and sexuality, it shows that cultural representations of being female and rural are myriad, complex, and multi-faceted. It offers new ways for seeing and understanding rural women’s experiences. The perceptive analyses here of how diverse rural female figures have alternatively found comfort, belonging, isolation, violence, and power offers a potent corrective to notions of rural worlds as monolithic, irrelevant, or passé. This is a wonderful and incredibly moving book. -- Nancy K. Berlage, Texas State UniversitySpanning over a century in the US and Canada, Representing Rural Women challenges our ideas of who rural women are and what they do. Through various media, representations of rural women and by rural women―such as Hurricane Katrina survivors, lesbians in the 1970s, fashion bloggers, trans girls, those who migrated, and more―complicate what it means to be a rural woman. Authors from a range of disciplines remind us at every turn of the multiplicity of rural experiences that counteract the way rural lives are narrowly depicted in public discourse. -- Charlotte Hogg, Texas Christian University About the Author Margaret Thomas-Evans is assistant professor and chair of the Department of English at Indiana University East. Whitney Womack Smith is professor of English and chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Writing at Miami University, Ohio.