If, as a corollary of urbanization, many artists seized, as early as the nineteenth century and most of the twentieth century, the city as object and scene of their reflection on a world under construction, it was not the same for rural areas. Generally speaking, until recently, the countryside's representations have been shaped by the writings of a ruling class. However, in recent decades, alongside the “country novels” or “terroir novels” that follow in line with the rustic current initiated in the nineteenth century, more demanding literary productions have emerged. These writings, often fed by the sense of loss and the end of a certain agricultural lifestyle, are also exploring the contemporary reconstructions of rural areas, little publicized. They redefine a new “regionality”, less militant and certainly less connoted in its nostalgic link to the land. This book revisits rural areas and their representations in contemporary writing, in both popular and high culture, in order to draw a global landscape of current rural areas and new regionalities.

Within the pages of a book exists a world drawn from a writer’s deepest imaginings, one that has the ability to pull readers in on a visceral level. But the audience’s fascination will only last if the writer can describe this vibrant realm and its inhabitants well. The setting achieves this by offering readers a unique sensory experience. So much more than stage dressing, the setting can build mood, convey meaning through symbolism, drive the plot by creating challenges that force the hero to fight for what he wants, and trigger his emotions to reveal his most intimate feelings, fears, and desires. Inside this volume you will find: • A list of the sights, smells, tastes, textures, and sounds for over 100 settings revolving around school, home, and nature • Possible sources of conflict for each location to help you brainstorm ways to naturally complicate matters for your characters • Advice on the many effective ways to build mood, helping you steer both the character’s and readers’ emotions in every scene • Information on how the setting directly influences the plot by acting as a tuning fork for what a character needs most and by testing his dedication to his goals • A tutorial on figurative language and how different descriptive techniques can bring settings alive for readers while conveying a symbolic message or deeper meaning • A review of the challenges that arise when writing description, as well as special considerations that apply specifically to rural and personal settings The Rural Setting Thesaurus takes “show-don’t-tell” to new heights. It offers writers a roadmap to creating fresh setting imagery that impacts the story on multiple levels and keeps readers engaged from the first page to the last.

Rural Literacies identifies the problems inherent in trying to understand rural literacy, addresses the lack of substantive research on literacy in rural areas, and reviews traditional misrepresentations of rural literacy. This innovative volume frames debates over literacy in relation to larger social, political, and economic forces, such as the impact of the No Child Left Behind Act on rural schools and the effects of out-migration, globalization, and the loss of small family farms on rural communities. Drawing upon traditional literacy and composition research and employing theory from education and sociology, the text engages compositionists in broader conversations regarding rural literacies. The authors share strategies that will help compositionists participate in pedagogies that are rooted in a richer understanding of rural literacies and work toward sustainability for all communities in a globalized age.

This book arises out of an ESRC project devoted to an examination of the economic, social and cultural impacts of the service class on rural areas. The research was an attempt to document these impacts through close empirical work in a set of three rural communities, but something happened on the way. The authors found that the rural became a real sticking point. Respondents used it in different ways - as a bludgeon, as a badge, as a barometer - to signify many different things - security, identity, community, domesticity, gender, sexuality, ethnicity - nearly always by drawing on many different sources - the media, the landscape, friends and kin, animals. It became abundantly clear that the rural, whatever chameleon form it took, was a prime and deeply felt determinant of the actions of many respondents. Yet it was also clear that to the authors they possessed no theoretical framework that could allow them to negotiate the rural to deconstruct its diverse nature as a category. Rather each of the extended essays in the book is an attempt by each author to draw out one aspect of the rural by drawing on different traditions in social and cultural theory.

Reclaiming the Rural moves beyond typical arguments for the preservation, abandonment, or modernization of rural communities, analyzing how communities in the United States, Canada, and Mexico sustain themselves--economically, environmentally, intellectually, and politically--through literate action.

These essays, all concerned with countryish things, range from intensely practical to mildly literary. Transplanted from New York fifteen years ago and now a real-life Vermont farmer, Noel Perrin candidly admits to hilarious early mistakes ("In Search of the Perfect Fence Post") while presenting down-to-earth advice on such rural necessities as "Sugaring on $15 a Year," "Raising Sheep," and "Making Butter in the Kitchen." But, as everyone who has read his essays in The New Yorker, Country Journal, and Vermont Life will confirm, not everything Perrin writes is strictly about the exigencies of country life. While one essay seems to discuss the use of wooden sap buckets, it really addresses the nature of illusion and reality as they coexist in rural places.

Inspiring stories of 10 people who left urban Japan to live ‘the simple life’ in the rural mountains—for anyone interested in sustainable living, Japanese counterculture, and Eastern spirituality “Subversive in the best possible way.” —Bill McKibben, New York Times–bestselling author The Abundance of Less captures the texture of sustainable lives well lived in these ten profiles of ordinary—yet exceptional—men and women who left behind mainstream existences in urban Japan to live surrounded by the luxuries of nature, art, friends, delicious food, and an abundance of time. Drawing on traditional Eastern spiritual wisdom and culture, these pioneers describe the profound personal transformations they underwent as they escaped the stress, consumerism, busyness, and dependence on technology of modern life. This intimate and evocative book tells of their fulfilling lives as artists, philosophers, and farmers who rely on themselves for happiness and sustenance. By inviting readers to enter into the essence of these individuals’ days, Couturier shows us how we too can bring more meaning and richness to our own lives.

Making readers care and feel like they’re part of the story should be the number one goal of all writers. Ironically, many storytellers fail to maximize one of fiction’s most powerful elements to achieve this: the setting. Rather than being a simple backdrop against which events unfold, every location has the potential to become a conduit for conveying emotion, characterizing the cast, providing opportunities for deep point of view, and revealing significant backstory. Inside this volume, you will find: • A list of the sights, smells, tastes, textures, and sounds for over 120 urban settings • Possible sources of conflict for each location to help you brainstorm ways to naturally complicate matters for your characters • Advice on how to make every piece of description count so you can maintain the right pace and keep readers engaged • Tips on utilizing the five senses to encourage readers to more fully experience each moment by triggering their own emotional memories • Information on how to use the setting to characterize a story’s cast through personalization and emotional values while using emotional triggers to steer their decisions • A review of specific challenges that arise when choosing an urban location, along with common descriptive pitfalls that should be avoided The Urban Setting Thesaurus helps you tailor each setting to your characters while creating a realistic, textured world your readers will long to return to, even after the book closes.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, modern Chinese intellectuals, reformers, revolutionaries, leftist journalists, and idealistic youth had often crossed the increasing gap between the city and the countryside, which made the act of “going to the countryside” a distinctively modern experience and a continuous practice in China. Such a spatial crossing eventually culminated in the socialist state program of “down to the villages” movements during the 1960s and 1970s. What, then, was the special significance of “going to the countryside” before that era? Going to the Countryside deals with the cultural representations and practices of this practice between 1915 and 1965, focusing on individual homecoming, rural reconstruction, revolutionary journeys to Yan’an, the revolutionary “going down to the people” as well as going to the frontiers and rural hometowns for socialist construction. As part of the larger discourses of enlightenment, revolution, and socialist industrialization, “going to the countryside” entailed new ways of looking at the world and ordinary people, brought about new experiences of space and time, initiated new means of human communication and interaction, generated new forms of cultural production, revealed a fundamental epistemic shift in modern China, and ultimately created a new aesthetic, social, and political landscape. As a critical response to the “urban turn” in the past few decades, this book brings the rural back to the central concern of Chinese cultural studies and aims to bridge the city and the countryside as two types of important geographical entities, which have often remained as disparate scholarly subjects of inquiry in the current state of China studies. Chinese modernity has been characterized by a dual process that created problems from the vast gap between the city and the countryside but simultaneously initiated constant efforts to cope with the gap personally, collectively, and institutionally. The process of “crossing” two distinct geographical spaces was often presented as continuous explorations of various ways of establishing the connectivity, interaction, and relationship of these two imagined geographical entities. Going to the Countryside argues that this new body of cultural productions did not merely turn the rural into a constantly changing representational space; most importantly, the rural has been constructed as a distinct modern experiential and aesthetic realm characterized by revolutionary changes in human conceptions and sentiments.

What happens to rural communities when their traditional economic base collapses? When new money comes in, who gets left behind? Pushed Out offers a rich portrait of Dover, Idaho, whose transformation from “thriving timber mill town” to “economically depressed small town” to “trendy second-home location” over the past four decades embodies the story and challenges of many other rural communities. Sociologist Ryanne Pilgeram explores the structural forces driving rural gentrification and examines how social and environmental inequality are written onto these landscapes. Based on in-depth interviews and archival data, she grounds this highly readable ethnography in a long view of the region that takes account of geological history, settler colonialism, and histories of power and exploitation within capitalism. Pilgeram’s analysis reveals the processes and mechanisms that make such communities vulnerable to gentrification and points the way to a radical justice that prioritizes the economic, social, and environmental sustainability necessary to restore these communities.