Representing Rural Women examines representations of the lives and experiences of rural women in North American literature, popular culture, and print, visual, and digital media. It highlights the complexity and diversity of rural women by considering intersecting issues of region, class, race and ethnicity, sexuality, and gender identity.

Item "describes the work that women did in agriculture, as seen in the parliamentary reports of 1843, 1967 [sic., 1867] and the 1890s, and the meanings given to that work in the local and national press, farming advice books, autobiographies and the art and literature of the period" -- back cover.

Representing Rural Women highlights the complexity and diversity of representations of rural women in the U.S. and Canada from the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries. The 15 chapters in this collection offer fresh perspectives on representations of rural women in literature, popular culture, and print, digital, and social media. They explore a wide range of time periods, geographic spaces, and rural women’s experiences, including Mormon pioneer women, rural lesbians in the 1970s, Canadian rural women’s organizations, and rural trans youth. In their stories, these women and girls navigate the complex realities of rural life, create spaces for self-expression, develop networks to communicate their experiences, and challenge misconceptions and stereotypes of rural womanhood. The chapters in this collection consider the ways that rural geography allows freedoms as well as imposes constraints on women’s lives, and explore how cultural representations of rural womanhood both reflect and shape women’s experiences.

Rural Women's Health encompasses the breadth and depth of the unique physical and psychological needs facing rural women throughout the United States and Canada, and identifies positive interventions and outcomes. Raymond T. Coward, founding editor of The Journal of Rural Health, along with five leading practitioners and researchers with contributions from over 25 educators, authors, program leaders, and researchers representing the multidisciplinary spectrum of rural health professionals, present the most comprehensive coverage on rural women's health that exists today. Key issues covered include: Socio-cultural stressors Policy changes Barriers to accessing mental health treatment Obesity and risk factors Behavioral risk factors Chronic diseases Exercise, nutrition, and health promotion programs Education and telehealth This is a valuable resource for mental health service providers, gerontologists, social workers, psychologists, counselors, and primary care physicians.

The period between the Civil War and the turn of the century was a time of great social upheaval in the United States. Lured by the promises of industrialization, much of the rural population moved to the cities, but those who remained in the countryside were isolated from the rapid changes in American society. Women found themselves torn between the battle for women's rights being hotly debated in the cities and the traditional role of homemaker, mother, and helper that was the norm in rural areas. In A Woman's Place, Norton Juster brings this turbulent period of American history to life using a broad sampling of articles, letters, poems, and essays taken from the popular literature of the time. While these publications recognized the hardship that characterized the lives of their readers, they upheld the idealized vision of the farmer's wife. It is this historical conflict between the independent woman and the traditional female role that makes A Woman's Place important reading today.

This collection of essays by a well-known American historian begins with personal accounts of the author's own experiences on a farm commune in the 1970s and those of her German immigrant grandmother in Wisconsin in the early 1900s. Other essays draw on oral history, iconography, and material culture to expand our knowledge of previously invisible women. Essays on Seneca women in New York, black women in Maryland, and Pueblo and Hispanic women in the Southwest document strategies used by diverse rural women to survive difficult transitions. The collection concludes with a look at modern attempts to retain family farms and a survey of new directions for research. Promise to the Land offers insight into a neglected area of American culture and will be invaluable to scholars and students of rural sociology, history, and women's studies -- Book jacket.