Reimagining Rural: Urbanormative Portrayals of Rural Life examines the ways in which rural people and places are being portrayed by popular television, reality television, film, literature, and news media in the United States. It is also an examination of the social processes that reinforce urbanormative standards that normalize urban life and render rural life as something unusual, exotic, or deviant. This includes exploring the role of the media as agenda setting agent, informing people what and how to think about rural life. Further it includes scrutinizing the institution of formal education that promotes a homogenous urban-oriented curriculum, while in the process, marginalizing the unique characteristics of local rural communities. These contributions are some of the only studies of their kind, investigating popular cultural representations of rural life, while providing powerful evidence and unique challenges for an urban society to rethink and reimagine rural life, while confronting the many stereotypes and myths that exist.

Gregory M. Fulkerson is associate professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Oneonta.

Alexander R. Thomas is professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Oneonta.

Chapter 1: Introduction: The Need to Reimagine Rural,Gregory M. Fulkerson& Alexander R. Thomas

Part I: Popular Media Representations of Rural
Chapter 2: Representations of Rural in Popular North American Television,Gregory M. Fulkerson& Brian M. Lowe
Chapter 3: Portrayals of Rural People and Places in Reality Television Programming: How Popular American Cable Series Misrepresent Rural Realities,Karl A. Jicha
Chapter 4: Inbred Horror Revisited: The Fear of the Rural in Twenty-First Century Backwoods Horror Films,Karen Hayden
Chapter 5: Reconsidering the Rural in the End: Rural Representations in Post-Apocalyptic Settings,Brian M. Lowe

Part II: The Sources of Rural Meaning and Knowledge Construction
Chapter 6: Urbanormativity in News Coverage of Rural Life,Pilar Erin McKay
Chapter 7: Cow College and Critical Rural Knowledge,Barbara Ching
Chapter 8: Common Core, STEM, and Rural schools: Views from Students and States,Leanne M. Avery& John W. Sipple
Chapter 9: Conclusion: Reimagining Rural,Gregory M. Fulkerson& Alexander R. Thomas