Visual Encounters in the Study of Rural Childhoods

Edited by April Mandrona and Claudia Mitchell; Foreword by Relebohile Moletsane

Rutgers University Press

Visual Encounters in the Study of Rural Childhoods brings together visual studies and childhood studies to explore images of childhood in the study of rurality and rural life. The volume highlights how the voices of children themselves remain central to investigations of rural childhoods. Contributions look at representations and experiences of rural childhoods from both the Global North and Global South (including U.S., Canada, Haiti, India, Sweden, Slovenia, South Africa, Russia, Timor-Leste, and Colombia) and consider visuals ranging from picture books to cell phone video to television.

‘Visual Encounters in the Study of Rural Childhoods is a welcome addition on many fronts. It tackles rural childhood in many locations around the world, both Global North and Global South, and it does so by means of studying the visual. Instead of taking images of carefree rural childhoods at face value, the authors delve into their hidden meanings. What are we really seeing in these visions and versions of childhood? This is recommended reading for scholars in many fields: childhood studies, rural history, history of gender and sexuality, and so many others.’
Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, author of Childhood on the Farm: Work, Play, and Coming of Age in the Midwest

This is a book of intersections that takes the seemingly temporal idea of childhood and connects it to the apparently spatial idea of rurality. This is very stimulating reading that employs the visual turn to illustrate some of the many ways childhood is experienced and represented in rural geographies. This work offers a timely challenge to established stereotypes about both childhood and rural life. Michael Corbett, coauthor of Rural Literacies: Transnational Perspectives

Chronicle of Higher Education weekly book list,' by Nina C. Ayoub Chronicle of Higher Education

APRIL MANDRONA is an assistant professor at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Canada. She is the editor of Canadian Art Teacher.

CLAUDIA MITCHELL is a James McGill Professor at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She is the editor-in-chief of Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and the author or coeditor of numerous books.

Contents

Preface
Forward
1.   Introduction: Beginnings
Part I
Images and Imaginings in the Study of Rural Childhoods
2.   Pastoral Visions of Childhood: Selling Suburbia as Home in the American Countryside
Holley Wlodarczyk
3.   Educating for the World Beyond: Challenging Idyllic Images of the Rural School
Jonathan Kresmer
4.   Nature Lovers as Nation Lovers in Canadian TV’s The Forest Rangers (1963–1965)
Jennifer VanderBurgh
5.   Video Game Depictions of Rural Childhoods in the Global South: Get Water! and Ayiti:
The Cost of Life
Renee Jackson & April Mandrona
6.   Patriot Boys and Pioneer Girls: Christian Homeschool Texts, Gender, and the American Rural Idyll
Elizabeth Shively
7.   Rural Girlhoods in Picturebooks: Visual Constructions of Social Practices
Karen Eppley
Part II
Acts of Memory and Imagination
8.   The Place of Girls? Collective Memory Work in the Study of Portrayals of Rural Girlhood in Swedish Child and Youth Literature
Eva Söderberg, Sara Nyhlén, Katja Gillander Gådin, & Katarina Giritli Nygren
9.   I Am a Child of Back-to-the-Landers
Sheilah Wilson
10.   Pekupatikut Innuat Akunikana / “Pictures Woke the People Up”: Revisiting Inuit Childhoods through Facebook
Wendy Ewald & Eric Gottesman
Part III
How We See It: Children’s Participation in Studying Rural Childhoods
11.   A Tale of Two Kindergartens: Visual Representations of Slovenian Children’s Daily Lives in a Rural and an Urban Setting
Barbara Turk Niskač
12.   The Story of Peter Both-in-One: Using Visual Storytelling Methods to Understand Resilience among Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Young Children in Rural New England
Sally Campbell Galman
13.   Growing up Rural in South Africa: On Using Cellphilms to Engage Children’s Ideas of Social Spaces
Naydene de Lange
14.   Image-Based Research: What Does Childhood Look Like in a Small Village?
Irina Kosterina
15.   Reimagining Rural Childhoods through Participatory Video and Global Education
Kelly Royds
16.   The Perfect Computer? Children’s Experiences with ICT in Rural Colombia
Diana Carolina Garcia Gomez and Helle Strandgaard Jensen
Index
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors

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