RURAL IMAGINATIONS 2022

24-26 August 2022

REC A - Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam

Conference Programme

9:30-10:30 Opening & Rural Imaginations Introduction - Esther Peeren // REC A 1.03
10:30-11:30 Keynote I – Jennifer Wenzel // REC A. 103
11:30-11:45 Coffee/tea break
11:45-13:15 Parallel Panels I
- Panel 1: Consuming the Rural, Part 1 // REC A 1.04
  - Chen Zhou (UvA), “Consuming Ecological Food: Practicing Rural Authenticity in the Urban”
  - Rachel Creaney et al. (James Hutton Institute), “Idealising the Rural: The Role of Scottish Mountains in Promoting the Scottish Whisky Brand”
  - Natalia Sánchez Querubín et al. (UvA), “Cottagecore: Romanticising Rural Living Online”
  - Shao Shao (UvA) “Feminized Idyllic Rurality as Spectacle: A Visual and Textual Analysis of Chinese Rural-based Online Celebrities Li ziqi and Dianxixiaoge [ONLINE]
- Panel 2: Rural Migrations and Mobilities // REC A 1.05
  - Chiara Davino (Bologna), “Re-Imagining the Margin: Emigration and Migration in Rural Italy” [ONLINE]
  - Sarah Ropp (UPenn), “Hostile Terrains: Imagining Migrant Children in the Rural US Southwest”
  - Dominika Mikolajczyk (UvA), “Re-Imagining the Rural Idyll: Eastern European Migrants in Contemporary Representations of the Italian and British Countryside”
- Panel 3: Villages and Transitions in the Age of Globalization // REC A 1.06
  - Frans Thissen (UvA), “Imaginations of changing villages in Dutch and Flemish Novels”
  - Sarah Rogers, B. Wilmsen, and N. Zhen (LaTrobe/Melbourne), “Contested rural imaginaries in the Three Gorges” [ONLINE]
  - Joyce Goggin, “Sponge Fishing on the Island of Kalymnos”
- Panel 4: Methodological Interventions and Perspectives // REC A.107
  - Pauline O’Connell (UvA), “Paradox not Paradise, the Rural as a Site of Representational Struggle” (Artistic Research) [Includes film screening of “A Woman’s Culm”, 17.30 mins]
  - Roel van den Oever (VU), “Gazing at God’s Own Country”
  - Maithri (UvA), “Walking and Popular Representations of the Migrant Exodus 2020 in India”
13:15-14:45 Lunch
14:45-16:30 Roundtable 1: Global Hinterlands // REC C 0.01
- Chair: Hanneke Stuit
- Featured Speakers: Sarah Nuttall, Pamila Gupta, Esther Peeren
16:30-16:45 Coffee/tea break
16:45-17:45 Keynote II – Rosemary Shirley // REC A 1.03
9:30-10:30 Keynote III – Corinne Fowler [ONLINE] // REC A 1.03
10:30-11:30 Keynote IV – Maxwell Ayamba // REC A 1.03
11:30-11:45 Coffee/tea break
11:45-13:15 Roundtables
- Roundtable 2: Rural Stakeholders // REC A 2.09
  - Chair: Anke Bosma
  - Speakers: Paul Fischer, Yvonne Faber, Jur Jacobs, Isabella Sueur
- Roundtable 3: Emerging Projects in Rural Studies // REC A 2.11
  - Chair: Tjalling Valdés Olmos
  - Speakers: Max Fraser, Garrett Dash Nelson, Maarten Zwiers
  - Respondent: Jaap Kooijman
13:15-14:45 Lunch
14:45-16:30 Film screening & Q&A – Janna Bystrykh & Wapke Feenstra // REC A 1.03
16:30-16:45 Coffee/tea break
16:45-18:15 Parallel Panels II
- Panel 5: Capitalist and Colonial Hauntings of the Rural: Infrastructural Hauntings // REC A 1.05
  - Mara Duer (Uni. of Buenos Aires), “Contested Rural Imaginations in Argentina” [ONLINE]
  - Ben Stringer (Westminster), “Frankenstein Takes a Stroll”
  - Samantha McCulloch (UvA), “Whose World? Unsettling Property at the Owl House, Nieu-Bethesda, South Africa”
- Panel 6: Capitalist and Colonial Hauntings of the Rural: Everyday Disruptions and Transitions // REC A 1.06
  - Josh Weeks (UvA), “From ‘La Bas’ to the Border (via the Argentinian Pampas): Representing the Rural in Roberto Bolaño’s By Night in Chile and The Insufferable Gaucho”
  - Jesse van Amelsvoort (UvA), “Life Wasn’t Yet Dead: Transitions and the Rural in Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet”
  - Sumati Dwivedia (Columbia), “Before, Beneath, Beyond the Nation: The Region and Its Rurality as Subversive Marks of Literary Genre” [ONLINE]
  - Marcel Strobel (UCal), “A Place Like No Other: Queering Amusement Space in the Midwest” [ONLINE]
- Panel 7: Farms and Infrastructures // REC A 1.07
  - Maria Patricia Tinajero (Portland), “Urban Rural Flow” [ONLINE]
  - Charles Weak (New York City), David Karle (Nebraska – Lincoln), “Bless This Mess: The Sitcom and Invisibility of Globalization in Rural US” [ONLINE]
  - Ruth Sacks (U of Johann), “Aestheticizing Rurality over Ecological Action” [ONLINE]
  - Jolien Klok (WUR), “Understanding Dutch Farmers on the Barricades: The Role of Farming Styles”
9:15-10:45 Roundtables
- Roundtable 4: Present Absences // REC A 2.09
  - Chair: Tjalling Valdés Olmos
  - Featured Speakers: Rowan V. Jaines, Kate Woodward, Lélia Tavakoli Farsooni
- Roundtable 5: Rural Gazes // REC A 2.11
  - Chair: Esther Peeren
  - Featured Speakers: Thoroddur Bjarnaso, Menelaos Gkartzios, Lee-Ann Sutherland
10:45-11:00 Coffee/tea break
11:00-12:00 Keynote V: Wanning Sun (online) // REC A 1.03
12:00-13:00 Keynote VI: Peter Hitchcock // REC A 1.03
13:00-14:30 Lunch
14:30-16:00 Parallel Panels III
- Panel 8: Consuming the Rural, Part 2 // REC A 1.04
  - Jessica Blackburn (Appalachian State), “Touring and Tasting Appalachian Terroir: Rural Subjectivities, Cultural Rhetorics, and Wine Tourism’s Commodified Imaginations” [ONLINE]
  - Pavel Pospech (Masaryk Uni), “Authentic Food and Banal Gastronationalism”
- Panel 9: Rural Lifeworlds // REC A 1.05
  - Tialda Haartsen (Groningen), “A Life Course and Generational Perspective on Rural Imaginations”
  - Jens Reda (Kiel University) and Marcus Heinz (Leipzig University), “Resonating Ruralities: A Lifeworld Perspective on Rural Civic Engagement”
- Panel 10: Visual Histories of the Rural // REC A 1.06
  - Corinne Geering (Leipzig), “Screening the Rural: Cinematic Imaginations of the Countryside in Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Ukraine after WWII”
  - Peter Veer (Independent), “Dreaming of Old to New in Politics and Film in the Netherlands”
  - Stefan Landsberger (UvA/Leiden), “Visualizing the Rural in Chinese Propaganda”
16:00-16:15 Coffee/tea break
16:15-17:15 Keynote VII – Michael Woods // REC A 1.03
17:15-18:15 Closing Discussion // REC A 1.03