Organiser: Laura Michele Diener (Department of History, Marshall University)

Time: 10-11 April 2015
Venue: Marshall University in Huntington, WV, USA
Abstracts due: 1 January 2015

This conference addresses, from a multi-disciplinary perspective, the roles, experiences, struggles, and triumphs of women in rural contexts across the world. Our theme is founded in the critique, introduced by feminist scholar Sherry Ortner (1974), of the pervasive view that women are inherently and irrevocably connected to nature. This idea’s corollary is that culture – read as progress, development, technology – is men’s work. But research has increasingly shown that women play a central role, not only in sustaining rural life, but also in the development and economic stability of ever changing rural communities. By examining perspectives on rurality throughout history as well as in the contemporary world — in which it is arguably a declining state — this conference will explore the gendered aspects of rurality and its vicissitudes within the neoliberal, global landscape. Read more and source …