Representing Rural Women

Margaret Thomas-Evans is associate 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 Regionals, Ohio.

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.

• ContentsIntroduction: Representing Rural WomenMargaret Thomas-Evans and Whitney Womack SmithPart I: Representations of Rural Women in Literature and FilmChapter 1. “Gone Country”: Literary Depictions of the New Woman in RuralityAdam Nemmers Chapter 2. Reassessing the American Migration Experience: The Dollmaker’s Gertie Nevels as an American Working-Class HeroineLaurie CellaChapter 3. A Quiet, Debilitating Ailment: Racial Isolation and Rural America in Willa Cather’s and Zora Neale Hurston’s Experimental FictionJericho WilliamsChapter 4. Ginseng-Gathering Women: The Underground Economy in Five Appalachian NovelsJimmy Dean SmithChapter 5. The Potential to Reform Rural Fingerbone: Sylvie’s New Western Revolution in Marilynne Robinson’s HousekeepingAmanda ZastrowChapter 6. Rural Spaces and (In)Disposable Bodies in Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the BonesJim CobyChapter 7. Codes of Kinship: Rural Poverty and Female Resilience in Winter’s BoneH. Louise Davis and Whitney Womack SmithChapter 8. Rural Trans Girlhoods in Young Adult FictionBarbara Pini and Wendy KeysPart II: Rural Women's Self-RepresentationsChapter 9. Poetic Representations of Mormon Women in Late Nineteenth-Century Frontier AmericaAmy Easton-FlakeChapter 10. Lightning Strikes, Burned Bread & Chipmunks: Women Lookouts in the American WestNancy CookChapter 11. A Life in the Country: Lesbians and Feminists Living on the Land Agatha Beins and Julie EnszerChapter 12. On Rural Transgender VisibilityEli ErlickChapter 13. Visual and Digital Representations of Canadian Rural Women’s OrganizationsMargaret Thomas-EvansChapter 14. “Pining for High Fashion?”: Rural Women Writing on Fashion OnlineHolly KentChapter 15. Fantasies and Phobias: De-Mythologizing Contemporary and Historical Depictions of Rural WomenElizabeth ThompsonIndexAbout the EditorsAbout the Contributors