Rural History

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• SOURCE: Slate
  11/5/2022
  

  What Has the Trump Era Done to Wendell Berry?

  "The Need to Be Whole once again considers the question that Berry has spent his entire life contemplating: How can we live among our fellow creatures in a way that is honorable, just, and as sustaining of our souls as of our material needs?" A reviewer doesn't think his latest work succeeds. 

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• SOURCE: UnHerd
  10/28/2022
  

  At 40, Springsteen's "Nebraska" Holds Up as a Harbinger of Rural Despair

  "It sold poorly and due to its troubling themes, Springsteen did not take it on tour. Nebraska was left to speak for itself. Today, exactly 40 years after its release, that voice is no less disquieting."

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  11/1/2022
  

  Pickup Trucks: Less Needed for Work, More Needed to Signal Masculinity?

  Historian Mark Metzler Sawin explains why pickup trucks are the top-selling vehicles in America, even as the country is more urbanized and less engaged with farm and manual labor than ever before. 

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• SOURCE: The Nation
  10/26/2022
  

  How Black Landowners in North Carolina are Working to Recover Generational Wealth

  Parts of eastern North Carolina are a living historical counterfactual: Black families there have been more successful than elsewhere in holding title to farm land against the encroachment of industry and discriminatory credit. 

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• 10/9/2022
  

  Rednecks for Kennedy: How an Urban Democrat Could Build Bridges to Rural America

  by Jeff Bloodworth

  The cultural divide between urban and rural America is real and politically significant. But the Kennedy administration's success in Oklahoma shows that a coalition can be built with a combination of transactional politics and committed outreach. 

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• SOURCE: Sapiens
  8/23/2022
  

  Anthropologists: Heartland Imagery Distorts History of Midwest, Elevates Whites as Real Americans

  Heartland imagery depends on images of white individuals and families obscure the forces of migration and industrialization that shaped the region and reinforce an image of rural whites as ideal citizens, argue two anthropologists. 

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• SOURCE: Our Towns Foundation
  4/28/2022
  

  How Powerful Stories are Rebuilding a Church

  by Deborah Fallows

  "The stories of Mt. Holly have become the sinew that could connect the town, or borough, as it is officially designated, from its past glory days, through some recent decline, to a new version of thriving."

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• 1/16/2022
  

  No Land, No Life: The Structure of Debilitating Black Land Loss in the South

  by Annelise Straw

  Despite pledges of aid by the Biden administration, access to credit remains an obstacle for African American farmers, who continue to face the loss of land and its attendant financial and emotional losses.

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  12/10/2021
  

  (Re)locating Sites of Memory in Appalachia Through Black Spaces and Stories

  by Kristan McCullum

  "I grew up in Jenkins not knowing its full history. I never knew the church I was raised in was once the movie theater that required Black patrons to sit in the balcony."

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• 6/20/2021
  

  Powerline Politics in the 1970s and Today

  by Tyler Priest

  Environmental activists have forged anti-pipeline alliances with rural landowners using the issue of eminent domain. History shows that this might boomerang if farmers oppose the new electric transmission lines that will be needed to implement green electrification. 

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• SOURCE: WVNews
  4/28/2021
  

  West Virginia Univ. Researcher Wins Carnegie Award for Study of Appalachian Feminism

  Jessica Wilkerson's research examines how the women's movement unfolded in places outside the nation's urban centers and how women decided what constituted "women's issues" in their own communities in Appalachia. 

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• SOURCE: Hedgehog Review
  4/10/2020
  

  Left Behind: The Trouble with Euphemism

  by Nancy Isenberg

  A historian of white rural poverty says that the cultural phenomenon of JD Vance's book "Hillbilly Elegy" is just the latest deployment of the "left behind" euphemism to obscure the nature of poverty in the United States. The rural poor are and have been part and parcel of the American economic order.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/8/2021
  

  Relief Bill is Most Significant Legislation for Black Farmers since Civil Rights Act, Experts Say

  The COVID-19 relief bill contains provisions that may help support African American farmers, who have been systematically harmed by prejudice, market dynamics and federal policy for the past century. 

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• SOURCE: JSTOR Daily
  5/18/2020
  

  Baseball History and Rural America

  The study of how baseball evolved, historain David Vaught writes, remains a test of how history is written--from concern with origin moments or attention to ongoing processes of change and development.

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• SOURCE: USA Today
  9-19-13
  

  Rural History Collector Keeps Outhouse Memories Alive

  "Outhouse Lady" takes stalk of artifacts of rural life for the social history they represent...