Disability and Rurality in American Literature: Ecosomatic Pastoralism

Matthew J.C. Cella examines the ways in which contemporary American writers deploy disability in order to deconstruct American pastoralism. An essential tenet of pastoralism is that encounters with rural landscapes quicken the human imagination by heightening awareness of and appreciation for the natural world. This study examines the counterpart to this formulation by underscoring the ways in which disability—as concept and experience—complicates pastoralism’s exaltation of rurality and rural experience. The texts examined in this book ultimately push back against the conventional pastoral ideal by exposing the ways in which dominant social constructions of rurality work to create disability. Additionally, many of the writers Cella analyzes contribute to a counter-rurality that is ultimately more complex and inclusive than what is featured in conventional American pastoralism. Ecosomatic pastoralism emphasizes the importance of locating an alignment between embodiment and emplacement through the space found between individual bodies and the landscapes they inhabit as well as the human and nonhuman bodies they interact with. Ultimately, this book examines literary texts that challenge notions of rurality that proclaim that certain ways of being-in-the-world are more “natural” than others.

Matthew J.C. Cella is Professor of English and Director of the Interdisciplinary Minor Program in Disability Studies at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania.