Life in the countryside, often perceived as either idyllic or depleted, has long been misrepresented. Challenging the stereotypes and myths that surround the idea of rurality, Our Rural Selves interrogates and represents individual and collective memories of childhood in rural landscapes and small towns. Drawing on visual artifacts whose origins range from the early twentieth century to today, such as photographs, films, objects, picture books, and digital games, contributors offer readings of childhood that are geographically, ethnically, and culturally diverse. They examine the memories of Indigenous children, the experiences of back-to-the-land youth, and boom-or-bust childhoods within the petroleum, farming, and fishing industries. Illustrating often neglected and overlooked aspects of adolescence, this collection suggests new ways of studying social connectedness and collective futures. Innovative and revealing in its use of visual studies, autoethnography, and memory-work, Our Rural Selves explores representation, imagination, and what it means to grow up rural in Canada.

Claudia Mitchell is a distinguished James McGill professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University and an honorary professor in the School of Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Claudia Mitchell's profile page

April Mandrona is assistant professor of art education in the Division of Art History and Contemporary Culture at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.

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"Offering a refreshingly innovative understanding of identity as produced and negotiated, Our Rural Selves convincingly exemplifies that we cannot understand our positions in the social, inclusive world without understanding our social connectedness as a shifting, dynamic relational of self with self, self with others and self as a possible, collective future." Daisy Pillay, University of KwaZulu-Natal

"Our Rural Selves provides an intriguing, multi-faceted perspective on the contemporary face of rural Canada, an important constituency that is often overlooked." Margaret Mackey, University of Alberta