The Rural Review
An online journal produced in conjunction with the Rural Reconciliation Project.
Smith: Rural Electric Cooperatives
In Empowering the Energy Transition in Rural Electric Cooperatives, Katrina Smith (Carolina Law), outlines the shortcomings of rural electric cooperatives and how they have transformed from their original design to what they are today. Smith considers various pathways for reform to empower rural communities, including how tax status can be leveraged as a new method of reform.
Chambliss: Rural Legal Markets
In Rural Legal Markets, Elizabeth Chambliss (University of South Carolina School of Law) explores the realities of the current legal market of private practice in rural South Carolina. Using a mixed-methods study of private practitioners, Chambliss examines the economic and professional structures that shape rural legal markets, identifies the ingredients of sustainable rural practice, and discusses incentives for rural practitioners to engage in pro bono and low-bono services.
Ryan: A Tale of Two Landlords
In A Tale of Two Landlords, Christopher J. Ryan Jr. (Maurer School of Law) explores the use of legal eviction from the landlord’s perspective, focusing on how costs impact landlords’ behaviors in the formal legal process of eviction. Drawing on over 200,000 eviction cases in Kentucky, the study explores the “economy of eviction,” and finds clear differences between landlords based on their location (rural or urban) and scale of their operations (small or large) when attempting to recoup lost rent or go through the eviction process.
Book Review: The Overlooked Americans
Grace Tracey reviews The Overlooked Americans: The Resilience of Our Rural Towns And What it Means For Our Country by Professor Elizabeth Currid-Halkett of the University of Southern California Price School of Public Policy.
This book examines small-town America’s success and challenges the popular rural narratives of crisis.
Roundup: July 24, 2026
A periodic collection of recent research, analysis, and other notable rural items.
Rural Democracy and Concentrated Economic Power: Workshop Reflection
This spring, the Rural Reconciliation Project convened an interdisciplinary workshop to explore how concentrated economic power shapes rural democracy: who gets to decide what, whose knowledge counts, whose labor is valued, whose ownership is visible, and whether communities are able to imagine and build a future on their own terms.
Mars: The Inauthenticity of Western Boom Town Main Streets
In Forgotten are the Locals: Structures of Common Differences and the Inauthentic Curation of Western Boom Town Main Streetscapes, author Matthew M. Mars (Public and Applied Humanities, University of Arizona) examines four rural Arizona “main street” streetscapes to better understand these structures function as inauthentic representations of everyday rural life.
Commentary: Public Interest Tests: Rural Interests in Land and Resource Decision-Making
Why do so many rural residents oppose land and resource use projects, such as energy development?
One commonality in each of these conflicts is the type of resource at issue – land and natural resources – which, because they are accessible to large groups of people and “vulnerable to depletion,” require collective management. This commentary explores literature surrounding rural resentment, particularly as it relates to land and natural resources management. Against this backdrop, I suggest that the one legal means of engaging in collective management, “public interest” tests, exacerbate this rural resentment even where designed to meet legitimate ends.
Roundup: June 19, 2026
A periodic collection of recent research, analysis, and other notable rural items.
Temple: Nursing Home Care for Family Farmers
In Protecting Access to Nursing Home Care for Family Farmers, Natalie Temple (Gonzaga Law School) explores the challenges faced by American farmers facing retirement age and the need for care in nursing home facilities. Due to the “land rich, cash poor” nature of most farmers, elderly care poses a choice for most farmers between selling off farmland or going without care.
Munis & Nemerever: Rural Residency, Rural Resentment, and Attitudes Towards Public Land Management
In Rural Residency, Rural Resentment, and Attitudes Towards Public Land Management in the United States, authors B. Kal Munis and Zoe Nemerever (both Political Science, Auburn) explore attitudes regarding federal public land management along the urban-rural divide. The authors find that while both rural and non-rural Americans are broadly supportive of federal public lands, a subset of “resentful ruralities” are markedly unsupportive of public lands due to their opposition to the federal government.
Commentary: Locked Out: An Examination of Public Land Access Challenges in the American West
By Erika Allen Wolters (Oregon State University) and Kevin Pirch (Eastern Washington University).
As the United States expanded its territory into the American West, the federal government’s distributive land policies helped promote settlement by incentivizing new residents with the promise of land, resources, and profit. While these policies, like the Homestead Act, helped entice settlers (and simultaneously displace Indigenous peoples), large-scale infrastructure projects such as the expansion of railways aided western settlement. However, the federal government retained a significant amount as public land, allocating it based on the Public Land Survey System (PLSS). The PLSS neatly mapped the region into 640-acre sections, resulting in a checkerboard pattern of public and private land ownership. This intermix of land ownership led to expected quarrels over natural resource use, ownership, and private property rights. Additionally, it also left about 9.52 million acres of the 640 million acres of public land total in the United States inaccessible for public use (TCRP).
Explore the Rural Review
Brief, objective summaries of new rural research across academic disciplines.
Collections of recent rural scholarship, news, and events.
Guest opinions, essays, research summaries, and other original content.
Original book reviews, creative reading lists, and further resources.
Summaries and announcements from recent programs and workshops.