UI Faculty & Staff Networking Event

• This invite-only event is for UI faculty and staff members who are personally or professionally interested in rural issues, or who work with rural populations or in rural spaces, to meet and learn about each other's work. If you meet the above-mentioned criteria, please complete this short survey to be added to the invite list. Catering will be provided.

Keynote Address:

• Esther Pereen, University of Amsterdam: "Reimagining the Rural from Idyll to Hinterland: Exhausting Rural Childhoods”

  
  Across the social and cultural realms, the rural is often imagined through idyllic and pastoral genres that allow it to be conceived as a refuge from globalization. Pereen's European Research Council–funded project RURAL IMAGINATIONS, concentrating on the literary, filmic, and televisual imagination of the rural in the UK, US, Netherlands, China, and South Africa, sought to explain why this is (by exploring the strong affective attachments that exist to these genres), what the effects of this are (in terms of invisibilizing globalization processes in the rural), and how to come up with ways of imagining the rural as globalized. The concept of the hinterland offers one such way, allowing the rural to be recognized as a historical site of (human and natural) resource extraction. By looking closely at two documentary films drawing attention to the exhausting lives of “left-behind” children in rural China and migrant farm workers in the US—Wang Bing’s 2012 Three Sisters and U. Roberto Romano’s 2011 The Harvest/La Cosecha—Pereen will explore how children working in rural hinterlands challenge the idyllic notion of the rural as allowing those living or visiting to take a breather and to breathe clean air. The children’s breathing, both films emphasize, is not restorative but becomes labored as they do farm work and face pollution and a pervasive affective atmosphere of hopelessness. At the same time, both films exemplify how rural hinterlands are not always realms of pure despair: the children find slivers of hope—moments of breathing more easily—in attending school or finding time to play. By outlining how the films diverge in the aesthetics and politics of breathing they present, it becomes clear that they differ in the degree of distance they take from the rural idyll.

Art in Rurality/Rurality in Art
This panel looks at initiatives using art and architecture as a tool for community revitalization in rural communities and the role of artists and architects in rural communities and in communicating rurality. 

Panelists:

• Rusty Smith, Associate Director of Rural Studio, Auburn University
• Carlton Turner, Founder of the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production
• Hope Tucker, Associate Professor of Cinematic Arts, University of Iowa
• Moderator: Travis Kraus, Professor of Practice, School of Planning and Public Affairs, and Director of the Iowa Initiative for Sustainable Communities, University of Iowa

Conceptualizing Rurality
Across communities and disciplines, there is a broad range of understanding as to what “rural” means.  It is a place, a geography, a community, an identity.  This panel explores who defines rurality, whom it includes, and the theoretical and practical consequences that flow from these choices.

Panelists:

• Cherisse Jones-Branch, Professor of History, Arkansas State University
• Rae Garringer, independent writer, oral historian, and audio producer
• Stephen Warren, Professor of American Studies and History, University of Iowa
• Moderator: Brandi Janssen, Clinical Professor of Occupational and Environmental Health, College of Public Health, University of Iowa

Iowa Initiative for Sustainable Communities highlight

• Travis Kraus, Professor of Practice, School of Planning and Public Affairs, and Director of the Iowa Initiative for Sustainable Communities, University of Iowa
• Ashley Laux, Assistant Director of the Iowa Initiative for Sustainable Communities, University of Iowa

Rural Access to Services and Resources
This panel looks at the challenges of providing rural access to a range of day-to-day services and resources in Iowa, from medical care to information. It also explores the role of research and research universities in increasing access.

Panelists:

• Tyler Hahn, Director of Cherokee Public Library
• Stephanie Radke, Clinical Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, UI Carver College of Medicine
• Moderator: Harleah Buck, Sally Mathis Hartwig Professor in Gerontological Nursing and Director of the Csomay Center for Gerontological Excellence, College of Nursing

Keynote Address:

• Andy Mink, Smithsonian Institute: "More than 'Not Urban': Serving Rural Communities as Places and as People"
  
  What are synonyms for rural? Country and small town? Rustic or backcountry? Pastoral or hick?
  
  Rural communities are an important part of American life and history, yet they are frequently seen in a deficit model defined by what they are not instead of what they are. While life in rural America may look different than in exurban and urban areas, it is a mistake to assume that the structures in rural areas are not as effective at building and maintaining thriving communities. Studies have shown that rural schools promote civic engagement more than other communities. Rurality is not a monolith, however, and different regions of the country have unique qualities and characteristics that are important to understand.
  
  The Smithsonian’s Rural Initiative aims to redefine the Institution as more than a destination located in Washington, D.C, but as a public service that can be accessed by local communities across the nation. Learn how this work is being operationalized to build strong working partnerships and develop community-sourced programs that respond to the identified priorities and challenges of rural America.