For over a century and a half, academics, public policy experts, and government bureaucrats have examined the causes and consequences of America's rural poverty “problem.” Often, they found the root cause of the issue in the people themselves—those isolated, white mountain folk viewed as shiftless, lazy, criminally inclined, intellectually stunted, and genetically inferior. This perception was mirrored through popular culture in books like Erskine Caldwell's Tobacco Road, TV shows like The Beverly Hillbillies, and movies like Deliverance. In his provocative book Peculiar Places, Ryan Cartwright puts a new spin on this old topic by examining rural white America through the lens of queer and disability studies. A professor of American studies at the University of California, Davis, Cartwright uses a case study approach to investigate not only the individuals who have inhabited what he calls “peculiar places,” but also the people who have scrutinized and studied...
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November 1, 2022
