What Are Rural Literacies? Mapping the Spaces

• In Event: Systems, Structures, Policies: Rural Implications

Abstract

This paper will present a partial mapping of the field of rural literacies that has emerged in the last decade following the publication of Edmondson’s Prairie Town (2003) and Donehower et al's (2007) Rural Literacies. These two texts presented the idea that rural places and spaces can be used to think about literacy practices in the context of larger educational and regional/community development issues. Work which has followed parallels movements in literacy studies that consider spatial questions as consequential. But the question remains, what exactly is rural literacy? Our answer relates to the kinds of question that have been taken up by literacy studies scholars working in rural contexts over the past decade.

Authors

• Kim Donehower, University of North Dakota

• Michael J. Corbett, University of Tasmania