Reclaiming the Rural: Essays on Literacy, Rhetoric, and Pedagogy

“The spatial turn in humanities and social science scholarship has given colleagues in rhetorical and writing studies a productive framework for re-envisioning the complexities of literacy. Yet, as Reclaiming the Rural rightly insists, this turn will remain incomplete until we correct the longstanding metropolitan bias in literacy research. Donehower, Hogg, Schell and their contributors embrace this challenge with astonishing resourcefulness. Chapter by chapter, their efforts yield provocative, field-changing arguments that command notice–and immediate engagement.”–Peter Mortensen, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

“With Reclaiming the Rural, Donehower, Hogg and Schell set a sustainable agenda for rural literacy studies in the years ahead. The essays in this collection are inclusive, engaging, informative, and convincing. They give the wider field better ways to understand relationships among literacy, place, and space. The main message–that rural students deserve language education that can help them voice the interests of their communities–stands as a model for educators everywhere.”–Deborah Brandt, author of Literacy in American Lives

“No matter where you live, no matter whom you teach, you have a stake in Reclaiming the Rural. These essays make urgently clear that educators and scholars do more than a disservice to rural people when we ignore rural communities as irrelevant or prepare rural students to expect that their futures will only be found in cities and suburbs. We cede to corporate ownership the land and resources on which life everywhere depends. The biggest public arguments ahead–about food sovereignty, water access, and energy sources after peak oil –will be played out against rural landscapes. What we do in our classrooms to promote critical rural literacy and foster relationships for effective advocacy across rural, urban, and suburban communities will matter. Reclaiming the Rural equips teachers with the perspectives, histories, and pedagogies we and our students need if we are to have a democratic voice in how our food is produced, how resources are extracted, how the environment is protected.”–Nancy Welch, Department of English, Chair, United Academics Delegates Assembly

“Reclaiming the Rural represents an incredibly important volume in its call to re-imagine and re-read, in the broadest possible sense, rural people, communities and society. This volume is fundamentally multi-disciplinary in scope and should be essential reading for scholars, educators, activists and anyone interested in the sustainability and well-being of rural people and places in the twenty-first century.”–Kai A. Schafft, Associate Professor of Education, Penn State University and Editor, Journal of Research in Rural Education

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Kim Donehower is an associate professor of English and the director of the Red River Valley Writing Project at the University of North Dakota. Her previous publications include essays in the Journal of Appalachian Studies and Women and Literacy: Local and Global Inquiries for a New Century.

Charlotte Hogg is an associate professor at Texas Christian University, the author of From the Garden Club: Rural Women Writing Community, and a coauthor of Rural Literacies with Kim Donehower and Eileen E. Schell.

Eileen E. Schell is the chair and the director of the Writing Program at Syracuse University and the author of Gypsy Academics and Mother-Teachers: Gender, Contingent Labor, and Writing Instruction.