Repositioning the Rural: Contemporary Representations of Gender and Rurality in American Media and Memoir

Abstract

Drawing on scholarship in the burgeoning field of rural studies, this project examines contemporary representations of rurality and gender in American media and memoir. Rather than attempting to identify a single “authentic” rurality, this project centers on Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by journalist Sarah Smarsh, the documentary-reality television series FarmHer hosted by photographer Marji Guyler-Alaniz, and the music of contemporary female country artists to interrogate the variegated ruralities that exist across genres. The following questions underpin this project: How does the shifting definition of “rural” affect how we define rurality? Why is the idea of the “rural” so difficult to work with in and of itself, and why does it take a backseat relative to other frames of reference in scholarship dealing with gender? What happens to rurality when we also consider class and race? What does an examination of rurality and all these intersections tell us about America’s collective understanding of the “rural”? Ultimately, this project aims to cast the rural as a legitimate category of literary and cultural study by providing a portrait that takes the complexity of the concept as its starting point. By shedding light on the often-competing representations of women in rural spaces across genres, this project puts forth the notion that rurality and its gendered intersections are far from predictable and known.